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ECONOMICS,   POLITICS,  AND 
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DEMOCRACY    AND 
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PREFATORY   NOTE 

The  following  pages  present  the  substance 
of  a  course  of  twelve  lectures  on  "  Democ- 
racy and  Social  Ethics "  which  have  been 
delivered  at  various  colleges  and  university 
extension  centres. 

In  putting  them  into  the  form  of  a  book, 
no  attempt  has  been  made  to  change  the 
somewhat  informal  style  used  in  speaking. 
The  "we"  and  "us"  which  originally  re- 
ferred to  the  speaker  and  her  audience  are 
merely  extended  to  possible  readers. 

Acknowledgment  for  permission  to  re- 
print is  extended  to  The  Atlantic  Monthly^ 
The  International  Journal  of  Ethics^  The 
American  Journal  of  Sociology ^  and  to  The 
Commons, 


Tii 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  I 

PAGB 

Introduction i 

CHAPTER   II 
Charitable  Effort 13 

CHAPTER  III 
Filial  Relations 71 

CHAPTER  IV 
Household  Adjustment 102 

CHAPTER  V 
Industrial  Amelioration 137 

CHAPTER  VI 
Educational  Methods 178 

CHAPTER  VII 
Political  Reform 221 

INDEX 279 

ix 


DEMOCRACY  AND  SOCIAL 
ETHICS 

CHAPTER   I 

Introduction 

It  is  well  to  remind  ourselves,  from  time  to 
time,  that  "  Ethics  "  is  but  another  word  for 
"righteousness,"  that  for  which  many  men 
and  women  of  every  generation  have  hun- 
gered and  thirsted,  and  without  which  life 
becomes  meaningless. 

Certain  forms  of  personal  righteousness 
have  become  to  a  majority  of  the  commu- 
nity almost  automatic.  It  is  as  easy  for  most 
of  us  to  keep  from  stealing  our  dinners  as  it 
is  to  digest  them,  and  there  is  quite  as  much 
voluntary  morality  involved  in  one  process  as 
in  the  other.  To  steal  would  be  for  us  to  fall 
sadly  below  the  standard  of  habit  and  expec- 
tation which  makes  virtue  easy.  In  the  same 
way  we  have  been  carefully  reared  to  a  sense 

B  I 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

of  family  obligation,  to  be  kindly  and  consid- 
erate to  the  members  of  our  own  households, 
and  to  feel  responsible  for  their  well-being. 
As  the  rules  of  conduct  have  become  estab- 
lished in  regard  to  our  self-development  and 
our  families,  so  they  have  been  in  regard  to 
limited  circles  of  friends.  If  the  fulfilment 
of  these  claims  were  all  that  a  righteous  life 
required,  the  hunger  and  thirst  would  be 
stilled  for  many  good  men  and  women,  and 
the  clew  of  right  living  would  lie  easily  in 
their  hands. 

But  we  all  know  that  each  generation  has 
its  own  test,  the  contemporaneous  and  cur- 
rent standard  by  which  alone  it  can  ade- 
quately judge  of  its  own  moral  achievements, 
and  that  it  may  not  legitimately  use  a  previ- 
ous and  less  vigorous  test.  The  advanced, 
test  must  indeed  include  that  which  has 
already  been  attained ;  but  if  it  includes  no 
more,  we  shall  fail  to  go  forward,  thinking 
complacently  that  we  have  "  arrived  "  when 
in  reality  we  have  not  yet  started. 

To  attain  individual  morality  in  an   age 


INTRODUCTION 

demanding  social  morality,  to  pride  one's 
self  on  the  results  of  personal  effort  when 
the  time  demands  social  adjustment,  is  ut- 
terly to  fail  to  apprehend  the  situation. 

It  is  perhaps  significant  that  a  German 
critic  has  of  late  reminded  us  that  the  one 
test  which  the  most  authoritative  and  dra- 
matic portrayal  of  the  Day  of  Judgment 
offers,  is  the  social  test.  The  stern  questions 
are  not  in  regard  to  personal  and  family  rela- 
tions, but  did  ye  visit  the  poor,  the  criminal, 
the  sick,  and  did  ye  feed  the  hungry  ? 

All  about  us  are  men  and  women  who 
have  become  unhappy  in  regard  to  their  atti- 
tude toward  the  social  order  itself;  toward 
the  dreary  round  of  uninteresting  work,  the 
pleasures  narrowed  down  to  those  of  appe- 
tite, the  declining  consciousness  of  brain 
power,  and  the  lack  of  mental  food  which 
characterizes  the  lot  of  the  large  propor- 
tion of  their  fellow-citizens.  These  men  and 
women  have  caught  a  moral  challenge  raised 
by  the  exigencies  of  contemporaneous  life; 
some  are  bewildered,  others  who  are  denied 

3 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

the  relief  which  sturdy  action  brings  are 
even  seeking  an  escape,  but  all  are  increas- 
ingly anxious  concerning  their  actual  rela- 
tions to  the  basic  organization  of  society. 

The  test  which  they  would  apply  to  their 
conduct  is  a  social  test.  They  fail  to  be 
content  with  the  fulfilment  of  their  family 
and  personal  obligations,  and  find  them- 
selves striving  to  respond  to  a  new  demand 
involving  a  social  obligation;  they  have 
become  conscious  of  another  requirement, 
and  the  contribution  they  would  make  is 
toward  a  code  of  social  ethics.  The  con- 
ception of  life  which  they  hold  has  not  yet 
expressed  itself  in  social  changes  or  legal 
enactment,  but  rather  in  a  mental  attitude  of 
maladjustment,  and  in  a  sense  of  divergence 
between  their  consciences  and  their  conduct. 
They  desire  both  a  clearer  definition  of  the 
code  of  morality  adapted  to  present  day 
demands  and  a  part  in  its  fulfilment,  both  a 
creed  and  a  practice  of  social  morality.  In 
the  perplexity  of  this  intricate  situation  at 
least  one  thing  is  becoming  clear :  if  the  latter 

4 


INTRODUCTION 

day  moral  ideal  is  in  reality  that  of  a  social 
morality,  it  is  inevitable  that  those  who 
desire  it  must  be  brought  in  contact  with  the 
moral  experiences  of  the  many  in  order  to 
procure  an  adequate  social  motive. 

These  men  and  women  have  realized  this 
and  have  disclosed  the  fact  in  their  eager- 
ness for  a  wider  acquaintance  with  and  par- 
ticipation in  the  life  about  them.  They 
believe  that  experience  gives  the  easy  and 
trustworthy  impulse  toward  right  action  in 
the  broad  as  well  as  in  the  narrow  relations. 
We  may  indeed  imagine  many  of  them  say- 
ing :  "  Cast  our  experiences  in  a  larger  mould 
if  our  lives  are  to  be  animated  by  the  larger 
social  aims.  We  have  met  the  obligations 
of  our  family  life,  not  because  we  had  made 
resolutions  to  that  end,  but  spontaneously, 
because  of  a  common  fund  of  memories  and 
affections,  from  which  the  obligation  natu- 
rally develops,  and  we  see  no  other  way  in 
which  to  prepare  ourselves  for  the  larger 
social  duties."  Such  a  demand  is  reason- 
able, for   by  our  daily  experience  we  have 

5 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

discovered  that  we  cannot  mechanically  hold 
up  a  moral  standard,  then  jump  at  it  in  rare 
moments  of  exhilaration  when  we  have  the 
strength  for  it,  but  that  even  as  the  ideal 
itself  must  be  a  rational  development  of  life, 
so  the  strength  to  attain  it  must  be  secured 
from  interest  in  life  itself.  We  slowly  learn 
that  life  consists  of  processes  as  well  as 
results,  and  that  failure  may  come  quite  as 
easily  from  ignoring  the  adequacy  of  one's 
method  as  from  selfish  or  ignoble  aims.  We 
are  thus  brought  to  a  conception  of  Democ- 
racy not  merely  as  a  sentiment  which  de- 
sires the  well-being  of  all  men,  nor  yet  as  a 
creed  which  believes  in  the  essential  dig- 
nity and  equality  of  all  men,  but  as  that 
which  affords  a  rule  of  living  as  well  as  a 
test  of  faith. 

We  are  learning  that  a  standard  of  social 
ethics  is  not  attained  by  travelling  a  seques- 
tered byway,  but  by  mixing  on  the  thronged 
and  common  road  where  all  must  turn  out 
for  one  another,  and  at  least  see  the  size  of 
one  another's  burdens.     To  follow  the  path 

6 


INTRODUCTION 

of  social  morality  results  perforce  in  the 
temper  if  not  the  practice  of  the  demo- 
cratic spirit,  for  it  implies  that  diversified 
human  experience  and  resultant  sympathy 
which  are  the  foundation  and  guarantee  of 
Democracy. 

There  are  many  indications  that  this  con- 
ception of  Democracy  is  growing  among  us. 
We  have  come  to  have  an  enormous  interest 
in  human  life  as  such,  accompanied  by  con- 
fidence in  its  essential  soundness.  We  do 
not  believe  that  genuine  experience  can 
lead  us  astray  any  more  than  scientific  data 
can. 

We  realize,  too,  that  social  perspective  and 
sanity  of  judgment  come  only  from  contact 
with  social  experience ;  that  such  contact  is 
the  surest  corrective  of  opinions  concerning 
the  social  order,  and  concerning  efforts,  how- 
ever humble,  for  its  improvement.  Indeed,  it 
is  a  consciousness  of  the  illuminating  and 
dynamic  value  of  this  wider  and  more 
thorough  human  experience  which  explains 
in  no  small  degree  that  new  curiosity  regard- 

7 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

ing  human  life  which  has  more  of  a  moral 
basis  than  an  intellectual  one. 

The  newspapers,  in  a  frank  reflection  of 
popular  demand,  exhibit  an  omniverous 
curiosity  equally  insistent  upon  the  trivial 
and  the  important.  They  are  perhaps  the 
most  obvious  manifestations  of  that  desire 
to  know,  that  "What  is  this?"  and  "Why 
do  you  do  that  ? "  of  the  child.  The  first 
dawn  of  the  social  consciousness  takes  this 
form,  as  the  dawning  intelligence  of  the 
child  takes  the  form  of  constant  question 
and  insatiate  curiosity. 

Literature,  too,  portrays  an  equally  absorb- 
ing though  better  adjusted  desire  to  know 
all  kinds  of  life.  The  popular  books  are 
the  novels,  dealing  with  life  under  all  pos- 
sible conditions,  and  they  are  widely  read 
not  only  because  they  are  entertaining,  but 
also  because  they  in  a  measure  satisfy  an 
unformulated  belief  that  to  see  farther,  to 
know  all  sorts  of  men,  in  an  indefinite  way, 
is  a  preparation  for  better  social  adjustment 
—  for  the  remedying  of  social  ills. 


INTRODUCTION 

Doubtless  one  under  the  conviction  of 
sin  in  regard  to  social  ills  finds  a  vague 
consolation  in  reading  about  the  lives  of 
the  poor,  and  derives  a  sense  of  complicity 
in  doing  good.  He  likes  to  feel  that  he 
knows  about  social  wrongs  even  if  he 
does  not  remedy  them,  and  in  a  very 
genuine  sense  there  is  a  foundation  for 
this  belief. 

Partly  through  this  wide  reading  of 
human  life,  we  find  in  ourselves  a  new 
affinity  for  all  men,  which  probably  never 
existed  in  the  world '  before.  Evil  itself  does 
not  shock  us  as  it  once  did,  and  we  count 
only  that  man  merciful  in  whom  we  recog- 
nize an  understanding  of  the  criminal.  We 
have  learned  as  common  knowledge  that 
much  of  the  insensibility  and  hardness  of 
the  world  is  due  to  the  lack  of  imagination 
which  prevents  a  realization  of  the  expe- 
riences of  other  people.  Already  there  is 
a  conviction  that  we  are  under  a  moral 
obligation  in  choosing  our  experiences,  since 
the  result  of   those   experiences   must   ulti- 

9 


DEMOCRACY  AND  SOCIAL  ETHICS 

mately  determine  our  understanding  of  life. 
We  know  instinctively  that  if  we  grow  con- 
temptuous of  our  fellows,  and  consciously 
limit  our  intercourse  to  certain  kinds  of 
people  whom  we  have  previously  decided 
to  respect,  we  not  only  tremendously  cir- 
cumscribe our  range  of  life,  but  limit  the 
scope  of  our  ethics. 

We  can  recall  among  the  selfish  people 
of  our  acquaintance  at  least  one  common 
characteristic, — the  conviction  that  they  are 
different  from  other  men  and  women,  that 
they  need  peculiar  consideration  because 
they  are  more  sensitive  or  more  refined. 
Such  people  "  refuse  to  be  bound  by  any 
relation  save  the  personally  luxurious  ones 
of  love  and  admiration,  or  the  identity  of 
political  opinion,  or  religious  creed."  We 
have  learned  to  recognize  them  as  selfish, 
although  we  blame  them  not  for  the  will 
which  chooses  to  be  selfish,  but  for  a  nar- 
rowness of  interest  which  deliberately  selects 
its  experience  within  a  limited  sphere,  and 
we   say  that   they   illustrate   the   danger  of 

lO 


INTRODUCTION 

concentrating  the  mind  on  narrow  and  un- 
progressive  issues. 

We  know,  at  last,  that  we  can  only  dis- 
cover truth  by  a  rational  and  democratic 
interest  in  life,  and  to  give  truth  complete 
social  expression  is  the  endeavor  upon  which 
we  are  entering.  Thus  the  identification 
with  the  common  lot  which  is  the  essential 
idea  of  Democracy  becomes  the  source  and 
expression  of  social  ethics.  It  is  as  though 
we  thirsted  to  drink  at  the  great  wells  of 
human  experience,  because  we  knew  that  a 
daintier  or  less  potent  draught  would  not 
carry  us  to  the  end  of  the  journey,  going 
forward  as  we  must  in  the  heat  and  jostle 
of  the  crowd. 

The  six  following  chapters  are  studies  of 
various  types  and  groups  who  are  being 
impelled  by  the  newer  conception  of  Democ- 
racy to  an  acceptance  of  social  obligations 
involving  in  each  instance  a  new  line  of 
conduct.  No  attempt  is  made  to  reach  a 
conclusion,  nor  to  offer  advice  beyond  the 
assumption  that  the  cure  for  the  ills  of 
II 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

Democracy  is  more  Democracy,  but  the 
quite  unlooked-for  result  of  the  studies 
would  seem  to  indicate  that  while  the  strain 
and  perplexity  of  the  situation  is  felt  most 
keenly  by  the  educated  and  self-conscious 
members  of  the  community,  the  tentative  and 
actual  attempts  at  adjustment  are  largely 
coming  through  those  who  are  simpler  and 
less  analytical. 


la 


CHAPTER    II 

Charitable  Effort 

All  those  hints  and  glimpses  of  a  larger 
and  more  satisfying  democracy,  which 
literature  and  our  own  hopes  supply,  have 
a  tendency  to  slip  away  from  us  and  to 
leave  us  sadly  unguided  and  perplexed 
when  we  attempt  to  act  upon  them. 

Our  conceptions  of  morality,  as  all  our 
other  ideas,  pass  through  a  course  of  devel- 
opment ;  the  difficulty  comes  in  adjusting  our 
conduct,  which  has  become  hardened  into 
customs  and  habits,  to  these  changing  moral 
conceptions.  When  this  adjustment  is  not 
made,  we  suffer  from  the  strain  and  indeci- 
sion of  believing  one  hypothesis  and  acting 
upon  another. 

Probably  there  is  no  relation  in  life 
which  our  democracy  is  changing  more 
13 


DEMOCRACY  AND  SOCIAL  ETHICS 

rapidly  than  the  charitable  relation  —  that 
relation  which  obtains  between  benefactor 
and  beneficiary;  at  the  same  time  there  is 
no  point  of  contact  in  our  modern  experi- 
ence which  reveals  so  clearly  the  lack  of 
that  equality  which  democracy  implies.  We 
have  reached  the  moment  when  democracy 
has  made  such  inroads  upon  this  relation- 
ship, that  the  complacency  of  the  old- 
fashioned  charitable  man  is  gone  forever; 
while,  at  the  same  time,  the  very  need  and 
existence  of  charity,  denies  us  the  consola- 
tion and  freedom  which  democracy  will  at 
last  give. 

It  is  quite  obvious  that  the  ethics  of  none 
of  us  are  clearly  defined,  and  we  are  con- 
tinually obliged  to  act  in  circles  of  habit, 
based  upon  convictions  which  we  no  longer 
hold.  Thus  our  estimate  of  the  effect 
of  environment  and  social  conditions  has 
doubtless  shifted  faster  than  our  methods  of 
administrating  charity  have  changed.  For- 
merly when  it  was  believed  that  poverty  was 
synonymous  with  vice  and  laziness,  and  that 
14 


CHARITABLE  EFFORT 

the  prosperous  man  was  the  righteous  man 
charity  was  administered  harshly  with  a 
good  conscience ;  for  the  charitable  agent 
really  blamed  the  individual  for  his  pov- 
erty, and  the  very  fact  of  his  own  superior 
prosperity  gave  him  a  certain  consciousness 
of  superior  morality.  We  have  learned 
since  that  time  to  measure  by  other  stand- 
ards, and  have  ceased  to  accord  to  the 
money-earning  capacity  exclusive  respect; 
while  it  is  still  rewarded  out  of  all  propor- 
tion to  any  other,  its  possession  is  by  no 
means  assumed  to  imply  the  possession  of 
the  highest  moral  qualities.  We  have 
learned  to  judge  men  by  their  social  virtues 
as  well  as  by  their  business  capacity,  by 
their  devotion  to  intellectual  and  disinter- 
ested aims,  and  by  their  public  spirit,  and 
we  naturally  resent  being  obliged  to  judge 
poor  people  so  solely  upon  the  industrial 
side.  Our  democratic  instinct  instantly 
takes  alarm.  It  is  largely  in  this  modern 
tendency  to  judge  all  men  by  one  demo- 
cratic standard,  while  the  old  charitable 
IS 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

attitude  commonly  allowed  the  use  of  two 
standards,  that  much  of  the  difficulty  ad- 
heres. We  know  that  unceasing  bodily  toil 
becomes  wearing  and  brutalizing,  and  our 
position  is  totally  untenable  if  we  judge 
large  numbers  of  our  fellows  solely  upon 
their  success  in  maintaining  it. 

The  daintily  clad  charitable  visitor  who 
steps  into  the  little  house  made  untidy  by 
the  vigorous  efforts  of  her  hostess,  the 
washerwoman,  is  no  longer  sure  of  her  su- 
periority to  the  latter;  she  recognizes  that 
her  hostess  after  all  represents  social  value 
and  industrial  use,  as  over  against  her  own 
parasitic  cleanliness  and  a  social  standing 
attained  only  through  status. 

The  only  families  who  apply  for  aid  to 
the  charitable  agencies  are  those  who  have 
come  to  grief  on  the  industrial  side ;  it  may 
be  through  sickness,  through  loss  of  work, 
or  for  other  guiltless  and  inevitable  reasons ; 
but  the  fact  remains  that  they  are  industri- 
ally ailing,  and  must  be  bolstered  and  helped 
into  industrial  health.  The  charity  visitor, 
i6 


CHARITABLE   EFFORT 

let  US  assume,  is  a  young  college  woman, 
well-bred  and  open-minded ;  when  she  visits 
the  family  assigned  to  her,  she  is  often  em- 
barrassed to  find  herself  obliged  to  lay  all 
the  stress  of  her  teaching  and  advice  upon 
the  industrial  virtues,  and  to  treat  the  mem- 
bers of  the  family  almost  exclusively  as 
factors  in  the  industrial  system.  She  in- 
sists that  they  must  work  and  be  self- 
supporting,  that  the  most  dangerous  of  all 
situations  is  idleness,  that  seeking  one's 
own  pleasure,  while  ignoring  claims  and 
responsibilities,  is  the  most  ignoble  of 
actions.  The  members  of  her  assigned 
family  may  have  other  charms  and  virtues 
—  they  may  possibly  be  kind  and  consider- 
ate of  each  other,  generous  to  their  friends, 
but  it  is  her  business  to  stick  to  the  indus- 
trial side.  As  she  daily  holds  up  these 
standards,  it  often  occurs  to  the  mind  of 
the  sensitive  visitor,  whose  conscience  has 
been  made  tender  by  much  talk  of  brother- 
hood and  equality,  that  she  has  no  right 
to  say  these  things ;  that  her  untrained 
c  17 


DEMOCRACY  AND  SOCIAL  ETHICS 

hands  are  no  more  fitted  to  cope  with 
actual  conditions  than  those  of  her  broken- 
down  family. 

The  grandmother  of  the  charity  visitor 
could  have  done  the  industrial  preaching 
very  well,  because  she  did  have  the  indus- 
trial virtues  and  housewifely  training.  In 
a  generation  our  experiences  have  changed, 
and  our  views  with  them ;  but  we  still  keep 
on  in  the  old  methods,  which  could  be  ap- 
plied when  our  consciences  were  in  line  with 
them,  but  which  are  daily  becoming  more 
difficult  as  we  divide  up  into  people  who 
work  with  their  hands  and  those  who  do 
not.  The  charity  visitor  belonging  to  the 
latter  class  is  perplexed  by  recognitions  and 
suggestions  which  the  situation  forces  upon 
her.  Our  democracy  has  taught  us  to  apply 
our  moral  teaching  all  around,  and  the 
moralist  is  rapidly  becoming  so  sensitive 
that  when  his  life  does  not  exemplify  his 
ethical  convictions,  he  finds  it  difficult  to 
preach. 

Added  to  this  is  a  consciousness,  in  the 
x8 


CHARITABLE   EFFORT 

mind  of  the  visitor,  of  a  genuine  misunder- 
standing of  her  motives  by  the  recipients  of 
her  charity,  and  by  their  neighbors.  Let 
us  take  a  neighborhood  of  poor  people,  and 
test  their  ethical  standards  by  those  of  the 
charity  visitor,  who  comes  with  the  best 
desire  in  the  world  to  help  them  out  of  their 
distress.  A  most  striking  incongruity,  at 
once  apparent,  is  the  difference  between  the 
emotional  kindness  with  which  relief  is  given 
by  one  poor  neighbor  to  another  poor  neigh- 
bor, and  the  guarded  care  with  which  relief 
is  given  by  a  charity  visitor  to  a  charity 
recipient.  The  neighborhood  mind  is  at 
once  confronted  not  only  by  the  difference 
of  method,  but  by  an  absolute  clashing  of 
two  ethical  standards. 

A  very  little  familiarity  with  the  poor 
districts  of  any  city  is  sufficient  to  show  how 
primitive  and  genuine  are  the  neighborly 
relations.  There  is  the  greatest  willingness 
to  lend  or  borrow  anything,  and  all  the  resi- 
dents of  the  given  tenement  know  the  most 
intimate  family  affairs  of  all  the  others. 
19 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

The  fact  that  the  economic  condition  of  all 
alike  is  on  a  most  precarious  level  makes 
the  ready  outflow  of  sympathy  and  material 
assistance  the  most  natural  thing  in  the 
world.  There  are  numberless  instances  of 
self-sacrifice  quite  unknown  in  the  circles 
where  greater  economic  advantages  make 
that  kind  of  intimate  knowledge  of  one's 
neighbors  impossible.  An  Irish  family  in 
which  the  man  has  lost  his  place,  and  the 
woman  is  struggling  to  eke  out  the  scanty 
savings  by  day's  work,  will  take  in  the  widow 
and  her  five  children  who  have  been  turned 
into  the  street,  without  a  moment's  reflec- 
tion upon  the  physical  discomforts  involved. 
The  most  maligned  landlady  who  lives  in 
the  house  with  her  tenants  is  usually  ready 
to  lend  a  scuttle  full  of  coal  to  one  of  them 
who  may  be  out  of  work,  or  to  share  her 
supper.  A  woman  for  whom  the  writer 
had  long  tried  in  vain  to  find  work  failed 
to  appear  at  the  appointed  time  when  em- 
ployment was  secured  at  last.  Upon  inves- 
tigation it  transpired  that  a  neighbor  further 
20 


CHARITABLE   EFFORT 

down  the  street  was  taken  ill,  that  the  chil- 
dren ran  for  the  family  friend,  who  went  of 
course,  saying  simply  when  reasons  for  her 
non-appearance  were  demanded,  *'  It  broke 
me  heart  to  leave  the  place,  but  what  could 
I  do  ? "  A  woman  whose  husband  was  sent 
up  to  the  city  prison  for  the  maximum 
term,  just  three  months,  before  the  birth  of 
her  child  found  herself  penniless  at  the 
end  of  that  time,  having  gradually  sold  her 
supply  of  household  furniture.  She  took 
refuge  with  a  friend  whom  she  supposed 
to  be  living  in  three  rooms  in  another  part 
of  town.  When  she  arrived,  however,  she 
discovered  that  her  friend's  husband  had 
been  out  of  work  so  long  that  they  had 
been  reduced  to  living  in  one  room.  The 
friend,  however,  took  her  in,  and  the  friend's 
husband  was  obliged  to  sleep  upon  a  bench 
in  the  park  every  night  for  a  week,  which 
he  did  uncomplainingly  if  not  cheerfully. 
Fortunately  it  was  summer,  "  and  it  only 
rained  one  night."  The  writer  could  not 
discover  from  the  young  mother  that  she  had 

21 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

any  special  claim  upon  the  "  friend  "  beyond 
the  fact  that  they  had  formerly  worked  to- 
gether in  the  same  factory.  The  husband 
she  had  never  seen  until  the  night  of  her 
arrival,  when  he  at  once  went  forth  in  search 
of  a  midwife  who  would  consent  to  come 
upon  his  promise  of  future  payment. 

The  evolutionists  tell  us  that  the  instinct 
to  pity,  the  impulse  to  aid  his  fellows,  served 
man  at  a  very  early  period,  as  a  rude  rule 
of  right  and  wrong.  There  is  no  doubt 
that  this  rude  rule  still  holds  among  many 
people  with  whom  charitable  agencies  are 
brought  into  contact,  and  that  their  ideas 
of  right  and  wrong  are  quite  honestly  out- 
raged by  the  methods  of  these  agencies. 
When  they  see  the  delay  and  caution  with 
which  relief  is  given,  it  does  not  appear 
to  them  a  conscientious  scruple,  but  as  the 
cold  and  calculating  action  of  a  selfish  man. 
It  is  not  the  aid  that  they  are  accustomed 
to  receive  from  their  neighbors,  and  they 
do  not  understand  why  the  impulse  which 
drives   people   to   "  be   good   to   the   poor " 


CHARITABLE   EFFORT 

should  be  so  severely  supervised.  They  feel, 
remotely,  that  the  charity  visitor  is  moved 
by  motives  that  are  alien  and  unreal.  They 
may  be  superior  motives,  but  they  are  dif- 
ferent, and  they  are  "agin  nature."  They 
cannot  comprehend  why  a  person  whose 
intellectual  perceptions  are  stronger  than 
his  natural  impulses,  should  go  into  charity 
work  at  all.  The  only  man  they  are  ac- 
customed to  see  whose  intellectual  percep- 
tions are  stronger  than  his  tenderness  of 
heart,  is  the  selfish  and  avaricious  man 
who  is  frankly  "  on  the  make."  If  the  charity 
visitor  is  such  a  person,  why  does  she  pre- 
tend to  like  the  poor.?  Why  does  she  not 
go  into  business  at  once } 

We  may  say,  of  course,  that  it  is  a  primi- 
tive view  of  life,  which  thus  confuses  intel- 
lectuality and  business  ability;  but  it  is  a 
view  quite  honestly  held  by  many  poor  peo- 
ple who  are  obliged  to  receive  charity  from 
time  to  time.  In  moments  of  indignation 
the  poor  have  been  known  to  say :  "  What  do 
you  want,  anyway }  If  you  have  nothing  to 
23 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

give  us,  why  not  let  us  alone  and  stop  your 
questionings  and  investigations  ?  "  "  They 
investigated  me  for  three  weeks,  and  in  the 
end  gave  me  nothing  but  a  black  character," 
a  little  woman  has  been  heard  to  assert. 
This  indignation,  which  is  for  the  most  part 
taciturn,  and  a  certain  kindly  contempt  for 
her  abilities,  often  puzzles  the  charity  visitor. 
The  latter  may  be  explained  by  the  standard 
of  worldly  success  which  the  visited  families 
hold.  Success  does  not  ordinarily  go,  in  the 
minds  of  the  poor,  with  charity  and  kind- 
heartedness,  but  rather  with  the  opposite 
qualities.  The  rich  landlord  is  he  who  col- 
lects with  sternness,  who  accepts  no  excuse, 
and  will  have  his  own.  There  are  moments 
of  irritation  and  of  real  bitterness  against 
him,  but  there  is  still  admiration,  because  he 
is  rich  and  successful.  The  good-natured 
landlord,  he  who  pities  and  spares  his 
poverty-pressed  tenants,  is  seldom  rich.  He 
often  lives  in  the  back  of  his  house,  which 
he  has  owned  for  a  long  time,  perhaps  has 
inherited ;  but  he  has  been  able  to  accumu- 
24 


CHARITABLE   EFFORT 

late  little.  He  commands  the  genuine  love 
and  devotion  of  many  a  poor  soul,  but  he 
is  treated  with  a  certain  lack  of  respect. 
In  one  sense  he  is  a  failure.  The  charity 
visitor,  just  because  she  is  a  person  who  con- 
cerns herself  with  the  poor,  receives  a  certain 
amount  of  this  good-natured  and  kindly  con- 
tempt, sometimes  real  affection,  but  little 
genuine  respect.  The  poor  are  accustomed 
to  help  each  other  and  to  respond  accord- 
ing to  their  kindliness;  but  when  it  comes 
to  worldly  judgment,  they  use  industrial  suc- 
cess as  the  sole  standard.  In  the  case  of 
the  charity  visitor  who  has  neither  natural 
kindness  nor  dazzling  riches,  they  are  de- 
prived of  both  standards,  and  they  find  it 
of  course  utterly  impossible  to  judge  of  the 
motive  of  organized  charity. 

Even  those  of  us  who  feel  most  sorely  the 
need  of  more  order  in  altruistic  effort  and 
see  the  end  to  be  desired,  find  something 
distasteful  in  the  juxtaposition  of  the  words 
"  organized "  and  "  charity."  We  say  in 
defence  that  we  are  striving  to  turn  this 
25 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

emotion  into  a  motive,  that  pity  is  capricious, 
and  not  to  be  depended  on;  that  we  mean 
to  give  it  the  dignity  of  conscious  duty. 
But  at  bottom  we  distrust  a  little  a  scheme 
which  substitutes  a  theory  of  social  conduct 
for  the  natural  promptings  of  the  heart,  even 
although  we  appreciate  the  complexity  of  the 
situation.  The  poor  man  who  has  fallen  into 
distress,  when  he  first  asks  aid,  instinctively 
expects  tenderness,  consideration,  and  forgive- 
ness. If  it  is  the  first  time,  it  has  taken  him 
long  to  make  up  his  mind  to  take  the  step. 
He  comes  somewhat  bruised  and  battered, 
and  instead  of  being  met  with  warmth  of 
heart  and  sympathy,  he  is  at  once  chilled  by 
an  investigation  and  an  intimation  that  he 
ought  to  work.  He  does  not  recognize  the 
disciplinary  aspect  of  the  situation. 

The  only  really  popular  charity  is  that  of 
the  visiting  nurses,  who  by  virtue  of  their 
professional  training  render  services  which 
may  easily  be  interpreted  into  sympathy  and 
kindness,  ministering  as  they  do  to  obvious 
needs  which  do  not  require  investigation. 
26 


CHARITABLE   EFFORT 

The  state  of  mind  which  an  investigation 
arouses  on  both  sides  is  most  unfortunate; 
but  the  perplexity  and  clashing  of  different 
standards,  with  the  consequent  misunder- 
standings, are  not  so  bad  as  the  moral  dete- 
rioration which  is  almost  sure  to  follow. 

When  the  agent  or  visitor  appears  among 
the  poor,  and  they  discover  that  under  cer- 
tain conditions  food  and  rent  and  medical 
aid  are  dispensed  from  some  unknown 
source,  every  man,  woman,  and  child  is 
quick  to  learn  what  the  conditions  may  be, 
and  to  follow  them.  Though  in  their  eyes 
a  glass  of  beer  is  quite  right  and  proper 
when  taken  as  any  self-respecting  man 
should  take  it ;  though  they  know  that 
cleanliness  is  an  expensive  virtue  which  can 
be  required  of  few ;  though  they  realize  that 
saving  is  well-nigh  impossible  when  but  a  few 
cents  can  be  laid  by  at  a  time ;  though  their 
feeling  for  the  church  may  be  something 
quite  elusive  of  definition  and  quite  apart 
from  daily  living :  to  the  visitor  they  gravely 
laud  temperance  and  cleanliness  and  thrift 
27 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

and  religious  observance.  The  deception 
in  the  first  instances  arises  from  a  wonder- 
ing inabiUty  to  understand  the  ethical  ideals 
which  can  require  such  impossible  virtues, 
and  from  an  innocent  desire  to  please.  It 
is  easy  to  trace  the  development  of  the 
mental  suggestions  thus  received.  When 
A  discovers  that  B,  who  is  very  little  worse 
off  than  he,  receives  good  things  from  an 
inexhaustible  supply  intended  for  the  poor 
at  large,  he  feels  that  he  too  has  a  claim  for 
his  share,  and  step  by  step  there  is  developed 
the  competitive  spirit  which  so  horrifies 
charity  visitors  when  it  shows  itself  in 
a  tendency  to  "  work "  the  relief-giving 
agencies. 

The  most  serious  effect  upon  the  poor 
comes  when  dependence  upon  the  chari- 
table society  is  substituted  for  the  natural 
outgoing  of  human  love  and  sympathy, 
which,  happily,  we  all  possess  in  some  de- 
gree. The  spontaneous  impulse  to  sit  up 
all  night  with  the  neighbor's  sick  child  is 
turned  into  righteous  indignation  against 
28 


CHARITABLE  EFFORT 

the  district  nurse,  because  she  goes  home 
at  six  o'clock,  and  doesn't  do  it  herself.  Or 
the  kindness  which  would  have  prompted 
the  quick  purchase  of  much  needed  medi- 
cine is  transformed  into  a  voluble  scoring 
of  the  dispensary,  because  it  gives  prescrip- 
tions and  not  drugs ;  and  "  who  can  get 
well  on  a  piece  of  paper  ? " 

If  a  poor  woman  knows  that  her  neigh- 
bor next  door  has  no  shoes,  she  is  quite 
willing  to  lend  her  own,  that  her  neighbor 
may  go  decently  to  mass,  or  to  work;  for 
she  knows  the  smallest  item  about  the 
scanty  wardrobe,  and  cheerfully  helps  out. 
When  the  charity  visitor  comes  in,  all  the 
neighbors  are  baffled  as  to  what  her  circum- 
stances may  be.  They  know  she  does  not 
need  a  new  pair  of  shoes,  and  rather  suspect 
that  she  has  a  dozen  pairs  at  home;  which, 
indeed,  she  sometimes  has.  They  imagine 
untold  stores  which  they  may  call  upon, 
and  her  most  generous  gift  is  considered 
niggardly,  compared  with  what  she  might 
do.  She  ought  to  get  new  shoes  for  the 
29 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

family  all  round,  "  she  sees  well  enough  that 
they  need  them."  It  is  no  more  than  the 
neighbor  herself  would  do,  has  practically 
done,  when  she  lent  her  own  shoes.  The 
charity  visitor  has  broken  through  the 
natural  rule  of  giving,  which,  in  a  primitive 
society,  is  bounded  only  by  the  need  of  the 
recipient  and  the  resources  of  the  giver; 
and  she  gets  herself  into  untold  trouble 
when  she  is  judged  by  the  ethics  of  that 
primitive  society. 

The  neighborhood  understands  the  selfish 
rich  people  who  stay  in  their  own  part  of 
town,  where  all  their  associates  have  shoes 
and  other  things.  Such  people  don't  bother 
themselves  about  the  poor;  they  are  like 
the  rich  landlords  of  the  neighborhood  ex- 
perience. But  this  lady  visitor,  who  pre- 
tends to  be  good  to  the  poor,  and  certainly 
does  talk  as  though  she  were  kind-hearted, 
what  does  she  come  for,  if  she  does  not 
intend  to  give  them  things  which  are  so 
plainly  needed  ? 

The  visitor  says,  sometimes,  that  in  hold- 
30 


CHARITABLE   EFFORT 

ing  her  poor  family  so  hard  to  a  standard 
of  thrift  she  is  really  breaking  down  a  rule 
of  higher  living  which  they  formerly  pos- 
sessed ;  that  saving,  which  seems  quite  com- 
mendable in  a  comfortable  part  of  town, 
appears  almost  criminal  in  a  poorer  quarter 
where  the  next-door  neighbor  needs  food, 
even  if  the  children  of  the  family  do  not. 

She  feels  the  sordidness  of  constantly 
being  obliged  to  urge  the  industrial  view  of 
life.  The  benevolent  individual  of  fifty 
years  ago  honestly  believed  that  industry 
and  self-denial  in  youth  would  result  in 
comfortable  possessions  for  old  age.  It 
was,  indeed,  the  method  he  had  practised 
in  his  own  youth,  and  by  which  he  had 
probably  obtained  whatever  fortune  he  pos- 
sessed. He  therefore  reproved  the  poor 
family  for  indulging  their  children,  urged 
them  to  work  long  hours,  and  was  utterly 
untouched  by  many  scruples  which  afflict 
the  contemporary  charity  visitor.  She  says 
sometimes,  "  Why  must  I  talk  always  of 
getting  work  and  saving  money,  the  things 
31 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

I  know  nothing  about  ?  If  it  were  anything 
else  I  had  to  urge,  I  could  do  it;  anything 
like  Latin  prose,  which  I  had  worried 
through  myself,  it  would  not  be  so  hard." 
But  she  finds  it  difficult  to  connect  the  ex- 
periences of  her  youth  with  the  experiences 
of  the  visited  family. 

Because  of  this  diversity  in  experience, 
the  visitor  is  continually  surprised  to  find 
that  the  safest  platitude  may  be  challenged. 
She  refers  quite  naturally  to  the  "  horrors  of 
the  saloon,"  and  discovers  that  the  head  of 
her  visited  family  does  not  connect  them 
with  "  horrors "  at  all.  He  remembers  all 
the  kindnesses  he  has  received  there,  the 
free  lunch  and  treating  which  goes  on, 
even  when  a  man  is  out  of  work  and  not 
able  to  pay  up;  the  loan  of  five  dollars  he 
got  there  when  the  charity  visitor  was  miles 
away  and  he  was  threatened  with  eviction. 
He  may  listen  politely  to  her  reference  to 
"horrors,"  but  considers  it  only  "temper- 
ance talk." 

The  charity  visitor  may  blame  the  women 
32 


CHARITABLE   EFFORT 

for  lack  of  gentleness  toward  their  children, 
for  being  hasty  and  rude  to  them,  until  she 
learns  that  the  standard  of  breeding  is  not  that 
of  gentleness  toward  the  children  so  much  as 
the  observance  of  certain  conventions,  such 
as  the  punctilious  wearing  of  mourning  gar- 
ments after  the  death  of  a  child.  The  stand- 
ard of  gentleness  each  mother  has  to  work 
out  largely  by  herself,  assisted  only  by  the 
occasional  shame-faced  remark  of  a  neighbor, 
"  That  they  do  better  when  you  are  not  too 
hard  on  them  " ;  but  the  wearing  of  mourn- 
ing garments  is  sustained  by  the  definitely 
expressed  sentiment  of  every  woman  in  the 
street.  The  mother  would  have  to  bear 
social  blame,  a  certain  social  ostracism,  if 
she  failed  to  comply  with  that  requirement. 
It  is  not  comfortable  to  outrage  the  conven- 
tions of  those  among  whom  we  live,  and,  if 
our  social  life  be  a  narrow  one,  it  is  still 
more  difficult.  The  visitor  may  choke  a 
little  when  she  sees  the  lessened  supply  of 
food  and  the  scanty  clothing  provided  for 
the  remaining  children  in  order  that  one 
D  33 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

may  be  conventionally  mourned,  but  she 
doesn't  talk  so  strongly  against  it  as  she 
would  have  done  during  her  first  month  of 
experience  with  the  family  since  bereaved. 
The  subject  of  clothes  indeed  perplexes 
the  visitor  constantly,  and  the  result  of  her 
reflections  may  be  summed  up  somewhat 
in  this  wise:  The  girl  who  has  a  definite 
social  standing,  who  has  been  to  a  fashion- 
able school  or  to  a  college,  whose  family 
live  in  a  house  seen  and  known  by  all  her 
friends  and  associates,  may  afford  to  be  very 
simple,  or  even  shabby  as  to  her  clothes,  if 
she  likes.  But  the  working  girl,  whose 
family  lives  in  a  tenement,  or  moves  from 
one  small  apartment  to  another,  who  has 
little  social  standing  and  has  to  make  her 
own  place,  knows  full  well  how  much  habit 
and  style  of  dress  has  to  do  with  her  posi- 
tion. Her  income  goes  into  her  clothing, 
out  of  all  proportion  to  the  amount  which 
she  spends  upon  other  things.  But,  if  social 
advancement  is  her  aim,  it  is  the  most  sen- 
sible thing  she  can  do.  She  is  judged 
34 


CHARITABLE   EFFORT 

largely  by  her  clothes.  Her  house  furnish- 
ing, with  its  pitiful  little  decorations,  her 
scanty  supply  of  books,  are  never  seen  by 
the  people  whose  social  opinions  she  most 
values.  Her  clothes  are  her  background, 
and  from  them  she  is  largely  judged.  It 
is  due  to  this  fact  that  girls'  clubs  succeed 
best  in  the  business  part  of  town,  where 
"  working  girls  "  and  "  young  ladies  "  meet 
upon  an  equal  footing,  and  where  the 
clothes  superficially  look  very  much  alike. 
Bright  and  ambitious  girls  will  come  to 
these  down-town  clubs  to  eat  lunch  and 
rest  at  noon,  to  study  all  sorts  of  subjects 
and  listen  to  lectures,  when  they  might 
hesitate  a  long  time  before  joining  a  club 
identified  with  their  own  neighborhood, 
where  they  would  be  judged  not  solely  on 
their  own  merits  and  the  unconscious  social 
standing  afforded  by  good  clothes,  but  by 
other  surroundings  which  are  not  nearly 
up  to  these.  For  the  same  reason,  girls' 
clubs  are  infinitely  more  difficult  to  organ- 
ize in  little  towns  and  villages,  where  every 
35 


DEMOCRACY   AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

one  knows  every  one  else,  just  how  the 
front  parlor  is  furnished,  and  the  amount 
of  mortgage  there  is  upon  the  house. 
These  facts  get  in  the  way  of  a  clear  and 
unbiassed  judgment;  they  impede  the  demo- 
cratic relationship  and  add  to  the  self-con- 
sciousness of  all  concerned.  Every  one 
who  has  had  to  do  with  down-town  girls' 
clubs  has  had  the  experience  of  going  into 
the  home  of  some  bright,  well-dressed  girl, 
to  discover  it  uncomfortable  and  perhaps 
wretched,  and  to  find  the  girl  afterward 
carefully  avoiding  her,  although  the  work- 
ing girl  may  not  have  been  at  home  when 
the  call  was  made,  and  the  visitor  may 
have  carried  herself  with  the  utmost  cour- 
tesy throughout.  In  some  very  successful 
down-town  clubs  the  home  address  is  not 
given  at  all,  and  only  the  "  business  address  " 
is  required.  Have  we  worked  out  our  de- 
mocracy further  in  regard  to  clothes  than 
anything  else? 

The     charity    visitor     has     been     rightly 
brought  up  to  consider  it  vulgar  to  spend 
36 


CHARITABLE    EFFORT 

much  money  upon  clothes,  to  care  so  much 
for  "appearances."  She  realizes  dimly  that 
the  care  for  personal  decoration  over  that 
for  one's  home  or  habitat  is  in  some  way 
primitive  and  undeveloped;  but  she  is  si- 
lenced by  its  obvious  need.  She  also 
catches  a  glimpse  of  the  fact  that  the  dis- 
proportionate expenditure  of  the  poor  in 
the  matter  of  clothes  is  largely  due  to  the 
exclusiveness  of  the  rich  who  hide  from 
them  the  interior  of  their  houses,  and  their 
more  subtle  pleasures,  while  of  necessity 
exhibiting  their  street  clothes  and  their 
street  manners.  Every  one  who  goes  shop- 
ping at  the  same  time  may  see  the  clothes 
of  the  richest  women  in  town,  but  only 
those  invited  to  her  receptions  see  the 
Corot  on  her  walls  or  the  bindings  in  her 
library.  The  poor  naturally  try  to  bridge 
the  difference  by  reproducing  the  street 
clothes  which  they  have  seen.  They  are 
striving  to  conform  to  a  common  standard 
which  their  democratic  training  presupposes 
belongs  to  all  of  us.  The  charity  visitor 
37 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

may  regret  that  the  Italian  peasant  woman 
has  laid  aside  her  picturesque  kerchief  and 
substituted  a  cheap  street  hat.  But  it  is 
easy  to  recognize  the  first  attempt  toward 
democratic  expression. 

The  charity  visitor  finds  herself  still  more 
perplexed  when  she  comes  to  consider  such 
problems  as  those  of  early  marriage  and 
child  labor;  for  she  cannot  deal  with  them 
according  to  economic  theories,  or  accord- 
ing to  the  conventions  which  have  regulated 
her  own  life.  She  finds  both  of  these  fairly 
upset  by  her  intimate  knowledge  of  the 
situation,  and  her  sympathy  for  those  into 
whose  lives  she  has  gained  a  curious  in- 
sight. She  discovers  how  incorrigibly  bour- 
geois her  standards  have  been,  and  it  takes 
but  a  little  time  to  reach  the  conclusion 
that  she  cannot  insist  so  strenuously  upon 
the  conventions  of  her  own  class,  which 
fail  to  fit  the  bigger,  more  emotional,  and 
freer  lives  of  working  people.  The  charity 
visitor  holds  well-grounded  views  upon  the 
imprudence  of  early  marriages,  quite  natu- 
38 


CHARITABLE   EFFORT 

rally  because  she  comes  from  a  family 
and  circle  of  professional  and  business 
people.  A  professional  man  is  scarcely 
equipped  and  started  in  his  profession  be- 
fore he  is  thirty.  A  business  man,  if  he  is 
on  the  road  to  success,  is  much  nearer  pros- 
perity at  thirty-five  than  twenty-five,  and  it 
is  therefore  wise  for  these  men  not  to  marry 
in  the  twenties ;  but  this  does  not  apply  to 
the  workingman.  In  many  trades  he  is  laid 
upon  the  shelf  at  thirty-five,  and  in  nearly 
all  trades  he  receives  the  largest  wages  in 
his  life  between  twenty  and  thirty.  If  the 
young  workingman  has  all  his  wages  to 
himself,  he  will  probably  establish  habits  of 
personal  comfort,  which  he  cannot  keep  up 
when  he  has  to  divide  with  a  family  —  habits 
which  he  can,  perhaps,  never  overcome. 

The  sense  of  prudence,  the  necessity  for 
saving,  can  never  come  to  a  primitive,  emo- 
tional man  with  the  force  of  a  conviction; 
but  the  necessity  of  providing  for  his  chil- 
dren is  a  powerful  incentive.  He  naturally 
regards  his  children  as  his  savings-bank ;  he 
39 


DEMOCRACY   AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

expects  them  to  care  for  him  when  he  gets 
old,  and  in  some  trades  old  age  comes  very 
early.  A  Jewish  tailor  was  quite  lately  sent 
to  the  Cook  County  poorhouse,  paralyzed 
beyond  recovery  at  the  age  of  thirty-five. 
Had  his  little  boy  of  nine  been  but  a  few 
years  older,  he  might  have  been  spared  this 
sorrow  of  public  charity.  He  was,  in  fact, 
better  able  to  well  support  a  family  when 
he  was  twenty  than  when  he  was  thirty-five, 
for  his  wages  had  steadily  grown  less  as 
the  years  went  on.  Another  tailor  whom 
I  know,  who  is  also  a  Socialist,  always 
speaks  of  saving  as  a  bourgeois  virtue,  one 
quite  impossible  to  the  genuine  working- 
man.  He  supports  a  family  consisting  of 
himself,  a  wife  and  three  children,  and  his 
two  parents  on  eight  dollars  a  week.  He  in- 
sists it  would  be  criminal  not  to  expend  every 
penny  of  this  amount  upon  food  and  shelter, 
and  he  expects  his  children  later  to  care 
for  him. 

This  economic  pressure  also  accounts  for 
the  tendency  to  put  children  to  work  over- 
40 


CHARITABLE   EFFORT 

young  and  thus  cripple  their  chances  for 
individual  development  and  usefulness,  and 
with  the  avaricious  parent  also  leads  to  ex- 
ploitation. "  I  have  fed  her  for  fourteen 
years,  now  she  can  help  me  pay  my  mort- 
gage "  is  not  an  unusual  reply  when  a  hard- 
working father  is  expostulated  with  because 
he  would  take  his  bright  daughter  out  of 
school  and  put  her  into  a  factory. 

It  has  long  been  a  common  error  for  the 
charity  visitor,  who  is  strongly  urging  her 
"  family "  toward  self-support,  to  suggest,  or 
at  least  connive,  that  the  children  be  put  to 
work  early,  although  she  has  not  the  excuse 
that  the  parents  have.  It  is  so  easy,  after 
one  has  been  taking  the  industrial  view  for 
a  long  time,  to  forget  the  larger  and  more 
social  claim ;  to  urge  that  the  boy  go  to 
work  and  support  his  parents,  who  are  re- 
ceiving charitable  aid.  She  does  not  realize 
what  a  cruel  advantage  the  person  who  dis- 
tributes charity  has,  when  she  gives  advice. 

The  manager  in  a  huge  mercantile  estab- 
lishment employing  many  children  was  able 
41 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

to  show  during  a  child-labor  investigation, 
that  the  only  children  under  fourteen  years  of 
age  in  his  employ  were  proteges  who  had 
been  urged  upon  him  by  philanthropic  ladies, 
not  only  acquaintances  of  his,  but  valued 
patrons  of  the  establishment.  It  is  not  that 
the  charity  visitor  is  less  wise  than  other 
people,  but  she  has  fixed  her  mind  so  long 
upon  the  industrial  lameness  of  her  family 
that  she  is  eager  to  seize  any  crutch,  how- 
ever weak,  which  may  enable  them  to  get  on. 
She  has  failed  to  see  that  the  boy  who 
attempts  to  prematurely  support  his  wid- 
owed mother  may  lower  wages,  add  an  illit- 
erate member  to  the  community,  and  arrest 
the  development  of  a  capable  workingman. 
As  she  has  failed  to  see  that  the  rules  which 
obtain  in  regard  to  the  age  of  marriage  in 
her  own  family  may  not  apply  to  the  work- 
ingman, so  also  she  fails  to  understand  that 
the  present  conditions  of  employment  sur- 
rounding a  factory  child  are  totally  unlike 
those  which  obtained  during  the  energetic 
youth  of  her  father. 
42 


CHARITABLE   EFFORT 

The  child  who  is  prematurely  put  to  work 
is  constantly  oppressed  by  this  never  ending 
question  of  the  means  of  subsistence,  and 
even  little  children  are  sometimes  almost 
crushed  with  the  cares  of  life  through  their 
affectionate  sympathy.  The  writer  knows 
a  little  Italian  lad  of  six  to  whom  the  prob- 
lems of  food,  clothing,  and  shelter  have 
become  so  immediate  and  pressing  that, 
although  an  imaginative  child,  he  is  unable 
to  see  life  from  any  other  standpoint.  The 
goblin  or  bugaboo,  feared  by  the  more  fortu- 
nate child,  in  his  mind,  has  come  to  be  the 
need  of  coal  which  caused  his  father  hysteri- 
cal and  demonstrative  grief  when  it  carried 
off  his  mother's  inherited  linen,  the  mosaic 
of  St.  Joseph,  and,  worst  of  all,  his  own 
rubber  boots.  He  once  came  to  a  party  at 
Hull-House,  and  was  interested  in  nothing 
save  a  gas  stove  which  he  saw  in  the  kitchen. 
He  became  excited  over  the  discovery  that 
fire  could  be  produced  without  fuel.  "  I  will 
tell  my  father  of  this  stove.  You  buy  no 
coal,  you  need  only  a  match.  Anybody  will 
43 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

give  you  a  match."  He  was  taken  to  visit 
at  a  country-house  and  at  once  inquired  how 
much  rent  was  paid  for  it.  On  being  told 
carelessly  by  his  hostess  that  they  paid  no 
rent  for  that  house,  he  came  back  quite  wild 
with  interest  that  the  problem  was  solved. 
"  Me  and  my  father  will  go  to  the  country. 
You  get  a  big  house,  all  warm,  without  rent." 
Nothing  else  in  the  country  interested  him 
but  the  subject  of  rent,  and  he  talked  of  that 
with  an  exclusiveness  worthy  of  a  single 
taxer. 

The  struggle  for  existence,  which  is  so 
much  harsher  among  people  near  the  edge 
of  pauperism,  sometimes  leaves  ugly  marks 
on  character,  and  the  charity  visitor  finds 
these  indirect  results  most  mystifying.  Par- 
ents who  work  hard  and  anticipate  an  old 
age  when  they  can  no  longer  earn,  take 
care  that  their  children  shall  expect  to 
divide  their  wages  with  them  from  the  very 
first.  Such  a  parent,  when  successful,  im- 
presses the  immature  nervous  system  of  the 
child  thus  tyrannically  establishing  habits 
44 


CHARITABLE   EFFORT 

of  obedience,  so  that  the  nerves  and  will 
may  not  depart  from  this  control  when 
the  child  is  older.  The  charity  visitor, 
whose  family  relation  is  lifted  quite  out  of 
this,  does  not  in  the  least  understand 
the  industrial  foundation  for  this  family 
tyranny. 

The  head  of  a  kindergarten  training-class 
once  addressed  a  club  of  working  women, 
and  spoke  of  the  despotism  which  is  often 
established  over  little  children.  She  said 
that  the  so-called  determination  to  break  a 
child's  will  many  times  arose  from  a  lust  of 
dominion,  and  she  urged  the  ideal  relation- 
ship founded  upon  love  and  confidence. 
But  many  of  the  women  were  puzzled.  One 
of  them  remarked  to  the  writer  as  she  came 
out  of  the  club  room,  "  If  you  did  not  keep 
control  over  them  from  the  time  they  were 
little,  you  would  never  get  their  wages  when 
they  are  grown  up."  Another  one  said, 
"  Ah,  of  course  she  (meaning  the  speaker) 
doesn't  have  to  depend  upon  her  children's 
wages.  She  can  afford  to  be  lax  with  them, 
45 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

because  even  if  they  don't  give  money  to  her, 
she  can  get  along  without  it." 

There  are  an  impressive  number  of  chil- 
dren who  uncomplainingly  and  constantly 
hand  over  their  weekly  wages  to  their 
parents,  sometimes  receiving  back  ten  cents 
or  a  quarter  for  spending-money,  but  quite 
as  often  nothing  at  all ;  and  the  writer 
knows  one  girl  of  twenty-five  who  for  six 
years  has  received  two  cents  a  week  from 
the  constantly  falling  wages  which  she  earns 
in  a  large  factory.  Is  it  habit  or  virtue 
which  holds  her  steady  in  this  course.*^  If 
love  and  tenderness  had  been  substituted 
for  parental  despotism,  would  the  mother 
have  had  enough  affection,  enough  power 
of  expression  to  hold  her  daughter's  sense 
of  money  obligation  through  all  these  years  ? 
This  girl  who  spends  her  paltry  two  cents 
on  chewing-gum  and  goes  plainly  clad  in 
clothes  of  her  mother's  choosing,  while  many 
of  her  friends  spend  their  entire  wages  on 
those  clothes  which  factory  girls  love  so 
well,  must  be  held  by  some  powerful  force. 
46 


CHARITABLE   EFFORT 

The  charity  visitor  finds  these  subtle  and 
elusive  problems  most  harrowing.  The 
head  of  a  family  she  is  visiting  is  a  man 
who  has  become  black-listed  in  a  strike.  He 
is  not  a  very  good  workman,  and  this,  added 
to  his  agitator's  reputation,  keeps  him  out 
of  work  for  a  long  time.  The  fatal  result 
of  being  long  out  of  work  follows:  he  be- 
comes less  and  less  eager  for  it,  and  gets 
a  "job"  less  and  less  frequently.  In  order 
to  keep  up  his  self-respect,  and  still  more  to 
keep  his  wife's  respect  for  him,  he  yields 
to  the  little  self-deception  that  this  prolonged 
idleness  follows  because  he  was  once  black- 
listed, and  he  gradually  becomes  a  martyr. 
Deep  down  in  his  heart  perhaps  —  but 
who  knows  what  may  be  deep  down  in  his 
heart.?  Whatever  may  be  in  his  wife's, 
she  does  not  show  for  an  instant  that  she 
thinks  he  has  grown  lazy,  and  accustomed 
to  see  her  earn,  by  sewing  and  cleaning, 
most  of  the  scanty  income  for  the  family. 
The  charity  visitor,  however,  does  see  this, 
and  she  also  sees  that  the  other  men  who 
47 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

were  in  the  strike  have  gone  back  to  work. 
She  further  knows  by  inquiry  and  a  little 
experience  that  the  man  is  not  skilful.  She 
cannot,  however,  call  him  lazy  and  good- 
for-nothing,  and  denounce  him  as  worthless 
as  her  grandmother  might  have  done,  be- 
cause of  certain  intellectual  conceptions  at 
which  she  has  arrived.  She  sees  other 
workmen  come  to  him  for  shrewd  advice; 
she  knows  that  he  spends  many  more  hours 
in  the  public  library  reading  good  books 
than  the  average  workman  has  time  to  do. 
He  has  formed  no  bad  habits  and  has  yielded 
only  to  those  subtle  temptations  toward  a 
life  of  leisure  which  come  to  the  intellectual 
man.  He  lacks  the  qualifications  which 
would  induce  his  union  to  engage  him  as 
a  secretary  or  organizer,  but  he  is  a  constant 
speaker  at  workingmen's  meetings,  and  takes 
a  high  moral  attitude  on  the  questions 
discussed  there.  He  contributes  a  certain 
intellectuality  to  his  friends,  and  he  has 
undoubted  social  value.  The  neighboring 
women  confide  to  the  charity  visitor  their 
48 


CHARITABLE   EFFORT 

sympathy  with  his  wife,  because  she  has  to 
work  so  hard,  and  because  her  husband  does 
not  "provide."  Their  remarks  are  sharp- 
ened by  a  certain  resentment  toward  the 
superiority  of  the  husband's  education  and 
gentle  manners.  The  charity  visitor  is 
ashamed  to  take  this  point  of  view,  for  she 
knows  that  it  is  not  altogether  fair.  She  is 
reminded  of  a  college  friend  of  hers,  who 
told  her  that  she  was  not  going  to  allow 
her  literary  husband  to  write  unworthy  pot- 
boilers for  the  sake  of  earning  a  living.  "  I 
insist  that  we  shall  live  within  my  own 
income ;  that  he  shall  not  publish  until  he 
is  ready,  and  can  give  his  genuine  message." 
The  charity  visitor  recalls  what  she  has 
heard  of  another  acquaintance,  who  urged 
her  husband  to  decline  a  lucrative  position 
as  a  railroad  attorney,  because  she  wished 
him  to  be  free  to  take  municipal  positions, 
and  handle  public  questions  without  the 
inevitable  suspicion  which  unaccountably 
attaches  itself  in  a  corrupt  city  to  a  corpo- 
ration attorney.  The  action  of  these  two 
E  49 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

women  seemed  noble  to  her,  but  in  their 
cases  they  merely  lived  on  a  lesser  income. 
In  the  case  of  the  workingman's  wife,  she 
faced  living  on  no  income  at  all,  or  on  the 
precarious  one  which  she  might  be  able  to 
get  together. 

She  sees  that  this  third  woman  has  made 
the  greatest  sacrifice,  and  she  is  utterly  un- 
willing to  condemn  her  while  praising  the 
friends  of  her  own  social  position.  She 
realizes,  of  course,  that  the  situation  is 
changed  by  the  fact  that  the  third  family 
needs  charity,  while  the  other  two  do  not; 
but,  after  all,  they  have  not  asked  for  it, 
and  their  plight  was  only  discovered  through 
an  accident  to  one  of  the  children.  The 
charity  visitor  has  been  taught  that  her 
mission  is  to  preserve  the  finest  traits  to 
be  found  in  her  visited  family,  and  she 
shrinks  from  the  thought  of  convincing  the 
wife  that  her  husband  is  worthless  and 
she  suspects  that  she  might  turn  all  this 
beautiful  devotion  into  complaining  drudg- 
ery.     To  be  sure,  she  could  give  up  visit- 


CHARITABLE   EFFORT 

ing  the  family  altogether,  but  she  has 
become  much  interested  in  the  progress 
of  the  crippled  child  who  eagerly  antici- 
pates her  visits,  and  she  also  suspects  that 
she  will  never  know  many  finer  women 
than  the  mother.  She  is  unwilling,  there- 
fore, to  give  up  the  friendship,  and  goes 
on  bearing  her  perplexities  as  best  she 
may. 

The  first  impulse  of  our  charity  visitor 
is  to  be  somewhat  severe  with  her  shift- 
less family  for  spending  money  on  pleas- 
ures and  indulging  their  children  out  of 
all  proportion  to  their  means.  The  poor 
family  which  receives  beans  and  coal  from 
the  county,  and  pays  for  a  bicycle  on  the 
instalment  plan,  is  not  unknown  to  any 
of  us.  But  as  the  growth  of  juvenile  crime 
becomes  gradually  understood,  and  as  the 
danger  of  giving  no  legitimate  and  organ- 
ized pleasure  to  the  child  becomes  clearer, 
we  remember  that  primitive  man  had 
games  long  before  he  cared  for  a  house  or 
regular  meals. 

5" 


DEMOCRACY   AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

There  are  certain  boys  in  many  city 
neighborhoods  who  form  themselves  into 
little  gangs  with  a  leader  who  is  somewhat 
more  intrepid  than  the  rest.  Their  favorite 
performance  is  to  break  into  an  untenanted 
house,  to  knock  off  the  faucets,  and  cut 
the  lead  pipe,  which  they  sell  to  the  near- 
est junk  dealer.  With  the  money  thus 
procured  they  buy  beer  and  drink  it  in 
little  free-booter's  groups  sitting  in  the  alley. 
From  beginning  to  end  they  have  the 
excitement  of  knowing  that  they  may  be 
seen  and  caught  by  the  "coppers,"  and  are 
at  times  quite  breathless  with  suspense. 
It  is  not  the  least  unlike,  in  motive  and 
execution,  the  practice  of  country  boys  who 
go  forth  in  squads  to  set  traps  for  rabbits 
or  to  round  up  a  coon. 

It  is  characterized  by  a  pure  spirit  for 
adventure,  and  the  vicious  training  really 
begins  when  they  are  arrested,  or  when 
an  older  boy  undertakes  to  guide  them 
into  further  excitements.  From  the  very 
beginning  the  most   enticing   and    exciting 


CHARITABLE   EFFORT 

experiences  which  they  have  seen  have 
been  connected  with  crime.  The  police- 
man embodies  all  the  majesty  of  successful 
law  and  established  government  in  his 
brass  buttons  and  dazzlingly  equipped  patrol 
wagon. 

The  boy  who  has  been  arrested  comes 
back  more  or  less  a  hero  with  a  tale  to 
tell  of  the  interior  recesses  of  the  mysteri- 
ous police  station.  The  earliest  public 
excitement  the  child  remembers  is  divided 
between  the  rattling  fire  engines,  "the 
time  there  was  a  fire  in  the  next  block," 
and  all  the  tense  interest  of  the  patrol 
wagon  "the  time  the  drunkest  lady  in  our 
street  was  arrested." 

In  the  first  year  of  their  settlement  the 
Hull- House  residents  took  fifty  kinder- 
garten children  to  Lincoln  Park,  only  to  be 
grieved  by  their  apathetic  interest  in  trees 
and  flowers.  As  they  came  back  with  an  om- 
nibus full  of  tired  and  sleepy  children,  they 
were  surprised  to  find  them  galvanized  into 
sudden  life  because  a  patrol  wagon  rattled 
53 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

by.  Their  eager  little  heads  popped  out 
of  the  windows  full  of  questioning:  "Was 
it  a  man  or  a  woman  ? "  "  How  many 
policemen  inside  ? "  and  eager  little  tongues 
began  to  tell  experiences  of  arrests  which 
baby  eyes  had  witnessed. 

The  excitement  of  a  chase,  the  chances 
of  competition,  and  the  love  of  a  fight  are 
all  centred  in  the  outward  display  of  crime. 
The  parent  who  receives  charitable  aid  and 
yet  provides  pleasure  for  his  child,  and  is 
willing  to  indulge  him  in  his  play,  is  blindly 
doing  one  of  the  wisest  things  possible ;  and 
no  one  is  more  eager  for  playgrounds  and 
vacation  schools  than  the  conscientious 
charity  visitor. 

This  very  imaginative  impulse  and  at- 
tempt to  live  in  a  pictured  world  of  their 
own,  which  seems  the  simplest  prerogative 
of  childhood,  often  leads  the  boys  into 
difficulty.  Three  boys  aged  seven,  nine, 
and  ten  were  once  brought  into  a  neigh- 
boring police  station  under  the  charge  of 
pilfering  and  destroying  property.  They 
54 


CHARITABLE   EFFORT 

had  dug  a  cave  under  a  railroad  viaduct 
in  which  they  had  spent  many  days  and 
nights  of  the  summer  vacation.  They  had 
"  swiped "  potatoes  and  other  vegetables 
from  hucksters'  carts,  which  they  had 
cooked  and  eaten  in  true  brigand  fashion ; 
they  had  decorated  the  interior  of  the 
excavation  with  stolen  junk,  representing 
swords  and  firearms,  to  their  romantic  im- 
aginations. The  father  of  the  ringleader 
was  a  janitor  living  in  a  building  five  miles 
away  in  a  prosperous  portion  of  the  city. 
The  landlord  did  not  want  an  active  boy 
in  the  building,  and  his  mother  was  dead ; 
the  janitor  paid  for  the  boy's  board  and 
lodging  to  a  needy  woman  living  near  the 
viaduct.  She  conscientiously  gave  him  his 
breakfast  and  supper,  and  left  something  in 
the  house  for  his  dinner  every  morning 
when  she  went  to  work  in  a  neighboring 
factory ;  but  was  too  tired  by  night  to  chal- 
lenge his  statement  that  he  "  would  rather 
sleep  outdoors  in  the  summer,"  or  to  in- 
vestigate what  he  did  during  the  day.  In 
55 


DEMOCRACY   AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

the  meantime  the  three  boys  lived  in  a 
world  of  their  own,  made  up  from  the 
reading  of  adventurous  stories  and  their 
vivid  imaginations,  steadily  pilfering  more 
and  more  as  the  days  went  by,  and  actually 
imperilling  the  safety  of  the  traffic  passing 
over  the  street  on  the  top  of  the  viaduct. 
In  spite  of  vigorous  exertions  on  their  be- 
half, one  of  the  boys  was  sent  to  the 
Reform  School,  comforting  himself  with 
the  conclusive  remark,  "  Well,  we  had  fun 
anyway,  and  maybe  they  will  let  us  dig  a 
cave  at  the  School;  it  is  in  the  country, 
where  we  can't  hurt  anything." 

In  addition  to  books  of  adventure,  or 
even  reading  of  any  sort,  the  scenes  and 
ideals  of  the  theatre  largely  form  the  man- 
ners and  morals  of  the  young  people. 
"  Going  to  the  theatre "  is  indeed  the 
most  common  and  satisfactory  form  of  rec- 
reation. Many  boys  who  conscientiously 
give  all  their  wages  to  their  mothers  have 
returned  each  week  ten  cents  to  pay  for  a 
seat  in  the  gallery  of  a  theatre  on  Sunday 
56 


CHARITABLE   EFFORT 

afternoon.  It  is  their  one  satisfactory 
glimpse  of  life  —  the  moment  when  they 
"  issue  forth  from  themselves "  and  are 
stirred  and  thoroughly  interested.  They 
quite  simply  adopt  as  their  own,  and  imi- 
tate as  best  they  can,  all  that  they  see 
there.  In  moments  of  genuine  grief  and 
excitement  the  words  and  the  gestures  they 
employ  are  those  copied  from  the  stage, 
and  the  tawdry  expression  often  conflicts 
hideously  with  the  fine  and  genuine  emotion 
of  which  it  is  the  inadequate  and  vulgar 
vehicle. 

As  in  the  matter  of  dress,  more  refined 
and  simpler  manners  and  mode  of  expres- 
sions are  unseen  by  them,  and  they  must 
perforce  copy  what  they  know. 

If  we  agree  with  a  recent  definition  of 
Art,  as  that  which  causes  the  spectator  to  lose 
his  sense  of  isolation,  there  is  no  doubt  that 
the  popular  theatre,  with  all  its  faults,  more 
nearly  fulfils  the  function  of  art  for  the  mul- 
titude of  working  people  than  all  the  "free 
galleries  "  and  picture  exhibits  combined. 

57 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

The  greatest  difficulty  is  experienced  when 
the  two  standards  come  sharply  together, 
and  when  both  sides  make  an  attempt  at 
understanding  and  explanation.  The  diffi- 
culty of  making  clear  one's  own  ethical 
standpoint  is  at  times  insurmountable.  A 
woman  who  had  bought  and  sold  school 
books  stolen  from  the  school  fund,  —  books 
which  are  all  plainly  marked  with  a  red 
stamp,  —  came  to  Hull  House  one  morning 
in:  great  distress  because  she  had  been 
arrested,  and  begged  a  resident  "  to  speak 
to  the  judge."  She  gave  as  a  reason  the 
fact  that  the  House  had  known  her  for  six 
years,  and  had  once  been  very  good  to  her 
when  her  little  girl  was  buried.  The  resi- 
dent more  than  suspected  that  her  visitor 
knew  the  school  books  were  stolen  when 
buying  them,  and  any  attempt  to  talk  upon 
that  subject  was  evidently  considered  very 
rude.  The  visitor  wished  to  get  out  of  her 
trial,  and  evidently  saw  no  reason  why  the 
House  should  not  help  her.  The  alder- 
man was  out  of  town,  so  she  could  not  go 
58 


CHARITABLE   EFFORT 

to  him.  After  a  long  conversation  the 
visitor  entirely  failed  to  get  another  point 
of  view  and  went  away  grieved  and  dis- 
appointed at  a  refusal,  thinking  the  resi- 
dent simply  disobliging;  wondering,  no 
doubt,  why  such  a  mean  woman  had  once 
been  good  to  her;  leaving  the  resident,  on 
the  other  hand,  utterly  baffled  and  in  the 
state  of  mind  she  would  have  been  in,  had 
she  brutally  insisted  that  a  little  child 
should  lift  weights  too  heavy  for  its  un- 
developed muscles. 

Such  a  situation  brings  out  the  impos- 
sibility of  substituting  a  higher  ethical 
standard  for  a  lower  one  without  similarity 
of  experience,  but  it  is  not  as  painful  as  that 
illustrated  by  the  following  example,  in  which 
the  highest  ethical  standard  yet  attained 
by  the  charity  recipient  is  broken  down, 
and  the  substituted  one  not  in  the  least 
understood :  — 

A  certain  charity  visitor  is  peculiarly 
appealed  to  by  the  weakness  and  pathos  of 
forlorn  old  age.  She  is  responsible  for  the 
59 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

well-being  of  perhaps  a  dozen  old  women  to 
whom  she  sustains  a  sincerely  affectionate 
and  almost  filial  relation.  Some  of  them 
learn  to  take  her  benefactions  quite  as  if 
they  came  from  their  own  relatives,  grum- 
bling at  all  she  does,  and  scolding  her  with 
a  family  freedom.  One  of  these  poor  old 
women  was  injured  in  a  fire  years  ago. 
She  has  but  the  fragment  of  a  hand  left,  and 
is  grievously  crippled  in  her  feet.  Through 
years  of  pain  she  had  become  addicted  to 
opium,  and  when  she  first  came  under  the 
visitor's  care,  was  only  held  from  the  poor- 
house  by  the  awful  thought  that  she  would 
there  perish  without  her  drug.  Five  years 
of  tender  care  have  done  wonders  for  her. 
She  lives  in  two  neat  little  rooms,  where 
with  her  thumb  and  two  fingers  she  makes 
innumerable  quilts,  which  she  sells  and  gives 
away  with  the  greatest  delight.  Her  opium 
is  regulated  to  a  set  amount  taken  each  day, 
and  she  has  been  drawn  away  from  much 
drinking.  She  is  a  voracious  reader,  and  has 
her  head  full  of  strange  tales  made  up  from 
60 


CHARITABLE   EFFORT 

books  and  her  own  imagination.  At  one 
time  it  seemed  impossible  to  do  anything 
for  her  in  Chicago,  and  she  was  kept  for  two 
years  in  a  suburb,  where  the  family  of  the 
charity  visitor  lived,  and  where  she  was 
nursed  through  several  hazardous  illnesses. 
She  now  lives  a  better  life  than  she  did, 
but  she  is  still  far  from  being  a  model 
old  woman.  The  neighbors  are  constantly 
shocked  by  the  fact  that  she  is  supported 
and  comforted  by  a  "  charity  lady,"  while  at 
the  same  time  she  occasionally  "  rushes  the 
growler,"  scolding  at  the  boys  lest  they  jar 
her  in  her  tottering  walk.  The  care  of  her 
has  broken  through  even  that  second  stand- 
ard, which  the  neighborhood  had  learned 
to  recognize  as  the  standard  of  charitable 
societies,  that  only  the  "  worthy  poor  "  are  to 
be  helped ;  that  temperance  and  thrift  are 
the  virtues  which  receive  the  plums  of  be- 
nevolence. The  old  lady  herself  is  conscious 
of  this  criticism.  Indeed,  irate  neighbors 
tell  her  to  her  face  that  she  doesn't  in  the 
least  deserve  what  she  gets.  In  order  to 
6i 


DEMOCRACY  AND  SOCIAL  ETHICS 

disarm  them,  and  at  the  same  time  to  ex- 
plain what  would  otherwise  seem  loving- 
kindness  so  colossal  as  to  be  abnormal,  she 
tells  them  that  during  her  sojourn  in  the 
suburb  she  discovered  an  awful  family 
secret,  —  a  horrible  scandal  connected  with 
the  long-suffering  charity  visitor;  that  it  is 
in  order  to  prevent  the  divulgence  of  this 
that  she  constantly  receives  her  ministra- 
tions. Some  of  her  perplexed  neighbors 
accept  this  explanation  as  simple  and  offer- 
ing a  solution  of  this  vexed  problem.  Doubt- 
less many  of  them  have  a  glimpse  of  the 
real  state  of  affairs,  of  the  love  and  patience 
which  ministers  to  need  irrespective  of 
worth.  But  the  standard  is  too  high  for 
most  of  them,  and  it  sometimes  seems  un- 
fortunate to  break  down  the  second  stand- 
ard, which  holds  that  people  who  "  rush  the 
growler  "  are  not  worthy  of  charity,  and  that 
there  is  a  certain  justice  attained  when  they 
go  to  the  poorhouse.  It  is  certainly  dan- 
gerous to  break  down  the  lower,  unless  the 
higher  is  made  clear. 
62 


CHARITABLE   EFFORT 

Just  when  our  affection  becomes  large 
enough  to  care  for  the  unworthy  among  the 
poor  as  we  would  care  for  the  unworthy 
among  our  own  kin,  is  certainly  a  perplex- 
ing question.  To  say  that  it  should  never 
be  so,  is  a  comment  upon  our  democratic 
relations  to  them  which  few  of  us  would  be 
willing  to  make. 

Of  what  use  is  all  this  striving  and  per- 
plexity ?  Has  the  experience  any  value  ? 
It  is  certainly  genuine,  for  it  induces  an 
occasional  charity  visitor  to  live  in  a  tene- 
ment house  as  simply  as  the  other  tenants 
do.  It  drives  others  to  give  up  visiting  the 
poor  altogether,  because,  they  claim,  it  is 
quite  impossible  unless  the  individual  be- 
comes a  member  of  a  sisterhood,  which 
requires,  as  some  of  the  Roman  Catholic 
sisterhoods  do,  that  the  member  first  take 
the  vows  of  obedience  and  poverty,  so  that 
she  can  have  nothing  to  give  save  as  it  is 
first  given  to  her,  and  thus  she  is  not 
harassed  by  a  constant  attempt  at  adjust- 
ment. 

63 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

Both  the  tenement-house  resident  and  the 
sister  assume  to  have  put  themselves  upon 
the  industrial  level  of  their  neighbors,  al- 
though they  have  left  out  the  most  awful 
element  of  poverty,  that  of  imminent  fear  of 
starvation  and  a  neglected  old  age. 

The  young  charity  visitor  who  goes  from 
a  family  living  upon  a  most  precarious  indus- 
trial level  to  her  own  home  in  a  prosperous 
part  of  the  city,  if  she  is  sensitive  at  all,  is 
never  free  from  perplexities  which  our  grow- 
ing democracy  forces  upon  her. 

We  sometimes  say  that  our  charity  is  too 
scientific,  but  we  would  doubtless  be  much 
more  correct  in  our  estimate  if  we  said  that 
it  is  not  scientific  enough.  We  dislike  the 
entire  arrangement  of  cards  alphabetically 
classified  according  to  streets  and  names  of 
families,  with  the  unrelated  and  meaningless 
details  attached  to  them.  Our  feeling  of 
revolt  is  probably  not  unlike  that  which 
afflicted  the  students  of  botany  and  geology 
in  the  middle  of  the  last  century,  when 
flowers  were  tabulated  in  alphabetical  order, 
64 


CHARITABLE    EFFORT 

when  geology  was  taught  by  colored  charts 
and  thin  books.  No  doubt  the  students, 
wearied  to  death,  many  times  said  that  it 
was  all  too  scientific,  and  were  much  per- 
plexed and  worried  when  they  found  traces 
of  structure  and  physiology  which  their  so- 
called  scientific  principles  were  totally  unable 
to  account  for.  But  all  this  happened  before 
science  had  become  evolutionary  and  sci- 
entific at  all,  before  it  had  a  principle  of 
life  from  within.  The  very  indications  and 
discoveries  which  formerly  perplexed,  later 
illumined  and  made  the  study  absorbing 
and  vital. 

We  are  singularly  slow  to  apply  this 
evolutionary  principle  to  human  affairs  in 
general,  although  it  is  fast  being  applied 
to  the  education  of  children.  We  are  at 
last  learning  to  follow  the  development 
of  the  child ;  to  expect  certain  traits  under 
certain  conditions;  to  adapt  methods  and 
matter  to  his  growing  mind.  No  "ad- 
vanced educator"  can  allow  himself  to  be 
so  absorbed  in  the  question  of  what  a  child 

F  65 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

ought  to  be  as  to  exclude  the  discovery  of 
what  he  is.  But  in  our  charitable  efforts 
we  think  much  more  of  what  a  man  ought 
to  be  than  of  what  he  is  or  of  what  he  may 
become ;  and  we  ruthlessly  force  our  con- 
ventions and  standards  upon  him,  with  a 
sternness  which  we  would  consider  stupid 
indeed  did  an  educator  use  it  in  forcing  his 
mature  intellectual  convictions  upon  an  un- 
developed mind. 

Let  us  take  the  example  of  a  timid  child, 
who  cries  when  he  is  put  to  bed  because 
he  is  afraid  of  the  dark.  The  "soft-hearted  " 
parent  stays  with  him,  simply  because  he  is 
sorry  for  him  and  wants  to  comfort  him. 
The  scientifically  trained  parent  stays  with 
him,  because  he  realizes  that  the  child  is  in 
a  stage  of  development  in  which  his  imagi- 
nation has  the  best  of  him,  and  in  which 
it  is  impossible  to  reason  him  out  of  a  belief 
in  ghosts.  These  two  parents,  wide  apart 
in  point  of  view,  after  all  act  much  alike, 
and  both  very  differently  from  the  pseudo- 
scientific  parent,  who  acts  from  dogmatic 
66 


CHARITABLE   EFFORT 

conviction  and  is  sure  he  is  right.  He 
talks  of  developing  his  child's  self-respect 
and  good  sense,  and  leaves  him  to  cry  him- 
self to  sleep,  demanding  powers  of  self- 
control  and  development  which  the  child 
does  not  possess.  There  is  no  doubt  that 
our  development  of  charity  methods  has 
reached  this  pseudo-scientific  and  stilted 
stage.  We  have  learned  to  condemn  un- 
thinking, ill-regulated  kind-heartedness,  and 
we  take  great  pride  in  mere  repression  much 
as  the  stern  parent  tells  the  visitor  below 
how  admirably  he  is  rearing  the  child,  who 
is  hysterically  crying  upstairs  and  laying 
the  foundation  for  future  nervous  disorders. 
The  pseudo-scientific  spirit,  or  rather,  the 
undeveloped  stage  of  our  philanthropy,  is 
perhaps  most  clearly  revealed  in  our  ten- 
dency to  lay  constant  stress  on  negative 
action.  "  Don't  give ;  "  "  don't  break  down 
self-respect,"  we  are  constantly  told.  We 
distrust  the  human  impulse  as  well  as  the 
teachings  of  our  own  experience,  and  in 
their  stead  substitute  dogmatic  rules  for 
67 


DEMOCRACY   AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

conduct.  We  forget  that  the  accumulation 
of  knowledge  and  the  holding  of  convictions 
must  finally  result  in  the  application  of  that 
knowledge  and  those  convictions  to  life 
itself;  that  the  necessity  for  activity  and  a 
pull  upon  the  sympathies  is  so  severe,  that 
all  the  knowledge  in  the  possession  of  the 
visitor  is  constantly  applied,  and  she  has  a 
reasonable  chance  for  an  ultimate  intel- 
lectual comprehension.  Indeed,  part  of  the 
perplexity  in  the  administration  of  charity 
comes  from  the  fact  that  the  type  of  person 
drawn  to  it  is  the  one  who  insists  that  her 
convictions  shall  not  be  unrelated  to  action. 
Her  moral  concepts  constantly  tend  to  float 
away  from  her,  unless  they  have  a  basis  in 
the  concrete  relation  of  life.  She  is  con- 
fronted with  the  task  of  reducing  her  scru- 
ples to  action,  and  of  converging  many  wills, 
so  as  to  unite  the  strength  of  all  of  them  into 
one  accomplishment,  the  value  of  which  no 
one  can  foresee. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  young  woman  who 
has  succeeded  in  expressing  her  social  com- 

68 


CHARITABLE    EFFORT 

punction  through  charitable  effort  finds  that 
the  wider  social  activity,  and  the  contact 
with  the  larger  experience,  not  only  increases 
her  sense  of  social  obligation  but  at  the 
same  time  recasts  her  social  ideals.  She  is 
chagrined  to  discover  that  in  the  actual  task 
of  reducing  her  social  scruples  to  action,  her 
humble  beneficiaries  are  far  in  advance  of 
her,  not  in  charity  or  singleness  of  purpose, 
but  in  self-sacrificing  action.  She  reaches 
the  old-time  virtue  of  humility  by  a  social 
process,  not  in  the  old  way,  as  the  man  who 
sits  by  the  side  of  the  road  and  puts  dust 
upon  his  head,  calling  himself  a  contrite 
sinner,  but  she  gets  the  dust  upon  her  head 
because  she  has  stumbled  and  fallen  in  the 
road  through  her  efforts  to  push  forward  the 
mass,  to  march  with  her  fellows.  She  has 
socialized  her  virtues  not  only  through  a 
social  aim  but  by  a  social  process. 

The  Hebrew  prophet  made  three  require- 
ments from  those  who  would  join  the  great 
forward-moving  procession  led   by  Jehovah. 
"  To  love  mercy  "  and  at  the  same  time  "  to 
69 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

do  justly  "  is  the  difficult  task ;  to  fulfil  the 
first  requirement  alone  is  to  fall  into  the 
error  of  indiscriminate  giving  with  all  its 
disastrous  results ;  to  fulfil  the  second  solely 
is  to  obtain  the  stern  policy  of  withholding, 
and  it  results  in  such  a  dreary  lack  of  sym- 
pathy and  understanding  that  the  establish- 
ment of  justice  is  impossible.  It  may  be 
that  the  combination  of  the  two  can  never 
be  attained  save  as  we  fulfil  still  the  third 
requirement  —  "  to  walk  humbly  with  God," 
which  may  mean  to  walk  for  many  dreary 
miles  beside  the  lowliest  of  His  creatures, 
not  even  in  that  peace  of  mind  which  the 
company  of  the  humble  is  popularly  sup- 
posed to  afford,  but  rather  with  the  pangs 
and  throes  to  which  the  poor  human  under- 
standing is  subjected  whenever  it  attempts 
to  comprehend  the  meaning  of  life. 


70 


CHAPTER   III 

Filial  Relations 

There  are  many  people  in  every  com- 
munity who  have  not  felt  the  "social  com- 
punction," who  do  not  share  the  effort 
toward  a  higher  social  morality,  who  are 
even  unable  to  sympathetically  interpret  it. 
Some  of  these  have  been  shielded  from  the 
inevitable  and  salutary  failures  which  the 
trial  of  new  powers  involve,  because  they 
are  content  to  attain  standards  of  virtue 
demanded  by  an  easy  public  opinion,  and 
others  of  them  have  exhausted  their  moral 
energy  in  attaining  to  the  current  standard 
of  individual  and  family  righteousness. 

Such  people,  who  form  the  bulk  of  con- 
tented society,  demand  that  the  radical,  the 
reformer,  shall  be  without  stain  or  question 
in  his  personal  and  family  relations,  and 
71 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

judge  most  harshly  any  deviation  from  the 
established  standards.  There  is  a  certain 
justice  in  this :  it  expresses  the  inherent 
conservatism  of  the  mass  of  men,  that  none 
of  the  established  virtues  which  have  been 
so  slowly  and  hardly  acquired  shall  be  sac- 
rificed for  the  sake  of  making  problematic 
advance ;  that  the  individual,  in  his  attempt 
to  develop  and  use  the  new  and  exalted 
virtue,  shall  not  fall  into  the  easy  tempta- 
tion of  letting  the  ordinary  ones  slip  through 
his  fingers. 

This  instinct  to  conserve  the  old  stand- 
ards, combined  with  a  distrust  of  the  new 
standard,  is  a  constant  difficulty  in  the  way 
of  those  experiments  and  advances  depending 
upon  the  initiative  of  women,  both  because 
women  are  the  more  sensitive  to  the  indi- 
vidual and  family  claims,  and  because  their 
training  has  tended  to  make  them  content 
with  the  response  to  these  claims  alone. 

There  is  no  doubt  that,  in  the  effort  to 
sustain  the  moral  energy  necessary  to  work 
out  a  more  satisfactory  social   relation,   the 

72 


FILIAL  RELATIONS 

individual  often  sacrifices  the  energy  which 
should  legitimately  go  into  the  fulfilment 
of  personal  and  family  claims,  to  what  he 
considers  the  higher  claim. 

In  considering  the  changes  which  our 
increasing  democracy  is  constantly  making 
upon  various  relationships,  it  is  impossible 
to  ignore  the  filial  relation.  This  chapter 
deals  with  the  relation  between  parents  and 
their  grown-up  daughters,  as  affording  an 
explicit  illustration  of  the  perplexity  and 
mal-adjustment  brought  about  by  the  vari- 
ous attempts  of  young  women  to  secure  a 
more  active  share  in  the  community  life. 
We  constantly  see  parents  very  much  dis- 
concerted and  perplexed  in  regard  to  their 
daughters  when  these  daughters  undertake 
work  lying  quite  outside  of  traditional  and 
family  interests.  These  parents  insist  that 
the  girl  is  carried  away  by  a  foolish  enthu- 
siasm, that  she  is  in  search  of  a  career,  that 
she  is  restless  and  does  not  know  what  she 
wants.  They  will  give  any  reason,  almost, 
rather  than  the  recognition  of  a  genuine 
73 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

and  dignified  claim.  Possibly  all  this  is 
due  to  the  fact  that  for  so  many  hundreds  of 
years  women  have  had  no  larger  interests,  no 
participation  in  the  affairs  lying  quite  outside 
personal  and  family  claims.  Any  attempt 
that  the  individual  woman  formerly  made  to 
subordinate  or  renounce  the  family  claim 
was  inevitably  construed  to  mean  that  she 
was  setting  up  her  own  will  against  that 
of  her  family's  for  selfish  ends.  It  was  con- 
cluded that  she  could  have  no  motive  larger 
than  a  desire  to  serve  her  family,  and  her 
attempt  to  break  away  must  therefore  be 
wilful  and  self-indulgent. 

The  family  logically  consented  to  give  her 
up  at  her  marriage,  when  she  was  enlarging 
the  family  tie  by  founding  another  family. 
It  was  easy  to  understand  that  they  per- 
mitted and  even  promoted  her  going  to 
college,  travelling  in  Europe,  or  any  other 
means  of  self-improvement,  because  these 
merely  meant  the  development  and  cultiva- 
tion of  one  of  its  own  members.  When, 
however,  she  responded  to   her  impulse  to 

74 


FILIAL   RELATIONS 

fulfil  the  social  or  democratic  claim,  she 
violated  every  tradition. 

The  mind  of  each  one  of  us  reaches  back 
to  our  first  struggles  as  we  emerged  from 
self-willed  childhood  into  a  recognition  of 
family  obligations.  We  have  all  gradu- 
ally learned  to  respond  to  them,  and  yet 
most  of  us  have  had  at  least  fleeting  glimpses 
of  what  it  might  be  to  disregard  them  and 
the  elemental  claim  they  make  upon  us. 
We  have  yielded  at  times  to  the  temptation 
of  ignoring  them  for  selfish  aims,  of  con- 
sidering the  individual  and  not  the  family 
convenience,  and  we  remember  with  shame 
the  self-pity  which  inevitably  followed.  But 
just  as  we  have  learned  to  adjust  the  per- 
sonal and  family  claims,  and  to  find  an 
orderly  development  impossible  without  rec- 
ognition of  both,  so  perhaps  we  are  called 
upon  now  to  make  a  second  adjustment 
between  the  family  and  the  social  claim, 
in  which  neither  shall  lose  and  both  be 
ennobled. 

The  attempt  to  bring  about  a  healing 
75 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

compromise  in  which  the  two  shall  be  ad- 
justed in  proper  relation  is  not  an  easy  one. 
It  is  difficult  to  distinguish  between  the 
outward  act  of  him  who  in  following  one 
legitimate  claim  has  been  led  into  the  tem^ 
porary  violation  of  another,  and  the  outward 
act  of  him  who  deliberately  renounces  a  just 
claim  and  throws  aside  all  obligation  for  the 
sake  of  his  own  selfish  and  individual  devel- 
opment. The  man,  for  instance,  who  deserts 
his  family  that  he  may  cultivate  an  artistic 
sensibility,  or  acquire  what  he  considers 
more  fulness  of  life  for  himself,  must  always 
arouse  our  contempt.  Breaking  the  mar- 
riage tie  as  Ibsen's  "  Nora "  did,  to  obtain 
a  larger  self-development,  or  holding  to  it 
as  George  Eliot's  "  Romola "  did,  because 
of  the  larger  claim  of  the  state  and  society, 
must  always  remain  two  distinct  paths.  The 
collision  of  interests,  each  of  which  has  a 
real  moral  basis  and  a  right  to  its  own  place 
in  life,  is  bound  to  be  more  or  less  tragic. 
It  is  the  struggle  between  two  claims,  the 
destruction  of  either  of  which  would  bring 

76 


FILIAL  RELATIONS 

ruin  to  the  ethical  life.  Curiously  enough, 
it  is  almost  exactly  this  contradiction  which 
is  the  tragedy  set  forth  by  the  Greek  drama- 
tist, who  asserted  that  the  gods  who  watch 
over  the  sanctity  of  the  family  bond  must 
yield  to  the  higher  claims  of  the  gods  of  the 
state.  The  failure  to  recognize  the  social 
claim  as  legitimate  causes  the  trouble ;  the 
suspicion  constantly  remains  that  woman's 
public  efforts  are  merely  selfish  and  captious, 
and  are  not  directed  to  the  general  good. 
This  suspicion  will  never  be  dissipated  until 
parents,  as  well  as  daughters,  feel  the  demo- 
cratic impulse  and  recognize  the  social 
claim. 

Our  democracy  is  making  inroads  upon 
the  family,  the  oldest  of  human  institutions, 
and  a  claim  is  being  advanced  which  in  a 
certain  sense  is  larger  than  the  family  claim. 
The  claim  of  the  state  in  time  of  war  has 
long  been  recognized,  so  that  in  its  name  the 
family  has  given  up  sons  and  husbands  and 
even  the  fathers  of  little  children.  If  we  can 
once  see  the  claims  of  society  in  any  such 

77 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

light,  if  its  misery  and  need  can  be  made 
clear  and  urged  as  an  explicit  claim,  as  the 
state  urges  its  claims  in  the  time  of  danger, 
then  for  the  first  time  the  daughter  who 
desires  to  minister  to  that  need  will  be 
recognized  as  acting  conscientiously.  This 
recognition  may  easily  come  first  through 
the  emotions,  and  may  be  admitted  as  a 
response  to  pity  and  mercy  long  before  it 
is  formulated  and  perceived  by  the  intellect. 
The  family  as  well  as  the  state  we  are 
all  called  upon  to  maintain  as  the  highest 
institutions  which  the  race  has  evolved  for 
its  safeguard  and  protection.  But  merely 
to  preserve  these  institutions  is  not  enough. 
There  come  periods  of  reconstruction,  dur- 
ing which  the  task  is  laid  upon  a  passing 
generation,  to  enlarge  the  function  and 
carry  forward  the  ideal  of  a  long-established 
institution.  There  is  no  doubt  that  many 
women,  consciously  and  unconsciously,  are 
struggling  with  this  task.  The  family,  like 
every  other  element  of  human  life,  is  sus- 
ceptible   of    progress,   and    from    epoch   to 

78 


FILIAL  RELATIONS 

epoch  its  tendencies  and  aspirations  are 
enlarged,  although  its  duties  can  never  be 
abrogated  and  its  obligations  can  never  be 
cancelled.  It  is  impossible  to  bring  about 
the  higher  development  by  any  self-asser- 
tion or  breaking  away  of  the  individual 
will.  The  new  growth  in  the  plant  swell- 
ing against  the  sheath,  which  at  the  same 
time  imprisons  and  protects  it,  must  still 
be  the  truest  type  of  progress.  The  family 
in  its  entirety  must  be  carried  out  into  the 
larger  life.  Its  various  members  together 
must  recognize  and  acknowledge  the  valid- 
ity of  the  social  obligation.  When  this 
does  not  occur  we  have  a  most  flagrant 
example  of  the  ill-adjustment  and  misery 
arising  when  an  ethical  code  is  applied  too 
rigorously  and  too  conscientiously  to  con- 
ditions which  are  no  longer  the  same  as 
when  the  code  was  instituted,  and  for  which 
it  was  never  designed.  We  have  all  seen 
parental  control  and  the  family  claim  assert 
their  authority  in  fields  of  effort  which  be- 
long to  the  adult  judgment  of  the  child  and 

79 


DEMOCRACY   AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

pertain  to  activity  quite  outside  the  family 
life.  Probably  the  distinctively,  family 
tragedy  of  which  we  all  catch  glimpses 
now  and  then,  is  the  assertion  of  this  au- 
thority through  all  the  entanglements  of 
wounded  affection  and  misunderstanding. 
We  see  parents  and  children  acting  from 
conscientious  motives  and  with  the  tender- 
est  affection,  yet  bringing  about  a  misery 
which  can  scarcely  be  hidden. 

Such  glimpses  remind  us  of  that  tragedy 
enacted  centuries  ago  in  Assisi,  when  the 
eager  young  noble  cast  his  very  clothing 
at  his  father's  feet,  dramatically  renouncing 
his  filial  allegiance,  and  formally  subjecting 
the  narrow  family  claim  to  the  wider  and 
more  universal  duty.  All  the  conflict  of 
tragedy  ensued  which  might  have  been 
averted,  had  the  father  recognized  the 
higher  claim,  and  had  he  been  willing  to 
subordinate  and  adjust  his  own  claim  to 
it.  The  father  considered  his  son  disre- 
spectful and  hard-hearted,  yet  we  know  St. 
Francis  to  have  been  the  most  tender  and 

80 


FILIAL   RELATIONS 

loving  of  men,  responsive  to  all  possible 
ties,  even  to  those  of  inanimate  nature. 
We  know  that  by  his  affections  he  freed 
the  frozen  life  of  his  time.  The  elements 
of  tragedy  lay  in  the  narrowness  of  the 
father's  mind ;  in  his  lack  of  comprehen- 
sion and  his  lack  of  sympathy  with  the 
power  which  was  moving  his  son,  and 
which  was  but  part  of  the  religious  revival 
which  swept  Europe  from  end  to  end  in 
the  early  part  of  the  thirteenth  century; 
the  same  power  which  built  the  cathe- 
drals of  the  North,  and  produced  the  saints 
and  sages  of  the  South.  But  the  father's 
situation  was  nevertheless  genuine;  he  felt 
his  heart  sore  and  angry,  and  his  dignity 
covered  with  disrespect.  He  could  not, 
indeed,  have  felt  otherwise,  unless  he  had 
been  touched  by  the  fire  of  the  same  re- 
vival, and  lifted  out  of  and  away  from  the 
contemplation  of  himself  and  his  narrower 
claim.  It  is  another  proof  that  the  no- 
tion of  a  larger  obligation  can  only  come 
through  the  response  to  an  enlarged  inter- 

G  8l 


DEMOCRACY  AND  SOCIAL  ETHICS 

est  in  life  and  in  the  social  movements 
around  us. 

The  grown-up  son  has  so  long  been  con- 
sidered a  citizen  with  well-defined  duties 
and  a  need  of  "making  his  way  in  the 
world,"  that  the  family  claim  is  urged  much 
less  strenuously  in  his  case,  and  as  a 
matter  of  authority,  it  ceases  gradually 
to  be  made  at  all.  In  the  case  of  the 
grown-up  daughter,  however,  who  is  under 
no  necessity  of  earning  a  living,  and  who 
has  no  strong  artistic  bent,  taking  her  to 
Paris  to  study  painting  or  to  Germany  to 
study  music,  the  years  immediately  follow- 
ing her  graduation  from  college  are  too 
often  filled  with  a  restlessness  and  unhap- 
piness  which  might  be  avoided  by  a  little 
clear  thinking,  and  by  an  adaptation  of  our 
code  of  family  ethics  to  modern  conditions. 

It  is  always  difficult  for  the  family  to 
regard  the  daughter  otherwise  than  as  a 
family  possession.  From  her  babyhood  she 
has  been  the  charm  and  grace  of  the 
household,   and   it   is   hard  to  think  of  her 

82 


FILIAL  RELATIONS 

as  an  integral  part  of  the  social  order, 
hard  to  believe  that  she  has  duties  out- 
side of  the  family,  to  the  state  and  to 
society  in  the  larger  sense.  This  assump- 
tion that  the  daughter  is  solely  an  inspira- 
tion and  refinement  to  the  family  itself  and 
its  own  immediate  circle,  that  her  delicacy 
and  polish  are  but  outward  symbols  of  her 
father's  protection  and  prosperity,  worked 
very  smoothly  for  the  most  part  so  long 
as  her  education  was  in  line  with  it.  When 
there  was  absolutely  no  recognition  of  the 
entity  of  woman's  life  beyond  the  family, 
when  the  outside  claims  upon  her  were 
still  wholly  unrecognized,  the  situation  was 
simple,  and  the  finishing  school  harmoni- 
ously and  elegantly  answered  all  require- 
ments. She  was  fitted  to  grace  the  fireside 
and  to  add  lustre  to  that  social  circle  which 
her  parents  selected  for  her.  But  this  family 
assumption  has  been  notably  broken  into, 
and  educational  ideas  no  longer  fit  it.  Mod- 
ern education  recognizes  woman  quite  apart 
from   family    or    society   claims,   and    gives 

83 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

her  the  training  which  for  many  years  has 
been  deemed  successful  for  highly  develop- 
ing a  man's  individuality  and  freeing  his 
powers  for  independent  action.  Perplexi- 
ties often  occur  when  the  daughter  returns 
from  college  and  finds  that  this  recogni- 
tion has  been  but  partially  accomplished. 
When  she  attempts  to  act  upon  the  as- 
sumption of  its  accomplishment,  she  finds 
herself  jarring  upon  ideals  which  are  so 
entwined  with  filial  piety,  so  rooted  in  the 
tenderest  affections  of  which  the  human 
heart  is  capable,  that  both  daughter  and 
parents  are  shocked  and  startled  when  they 
discover  what  is  happening,  and  they 
scarcely  venture  to  analyze  the  situation. 
The  ideal  for  the  education  of  woman  has 
changed  under  the  pressure  of  a  new  claim. 
The  family  has  responded  to  the  extent  of 
granting  the  education,  but  they  are  jeal- 
ous of  the  new  claim  and  assert  the  family 
claim  as  over  against  it. 

The   modern   woman    finds    herself    edu- 
cated to  recognize  a  stress  of  social  obliga- 

84 


FILIAL  RELATIONS 

tion  which  her  family  did  not  in  the  least 
anticipate  when  they  sent  her  to  college. 
She  finds  herself,  in  addition,  under  an 
impulse  to  act  her  part  as  a  citizen  of  the 
world.  She  accepts  her  family  inheritance 
with  loyalty  and  affection,  but  she  has  en- 
tered into  a  wider  inheritance  as  well, 
which,  for  lack  of  a  better  phrase,  we  call 
the  social  claim.  This  claim  has  been  rec- 
ognized for  four  years  in  her  training,  but 
after  her  return  from  college  the  family 
claim  is  again  exclusively  and  strenuously 
asserted.  The  situation  has  all  the  dis- 
comfort of  transition  and  compromise. 
The  daughter  finds  a  constant  and  totally 
unnecessary  conflict  between  the  social  and 
the  family  claims.  In  most  cases  the 
former  is  repressed  and  gives  way  to  the 
family  claim,  because  the  latter  is  concrete 
and  definitely  asserted,  while  the  social 
demand  is  vague  and  unformulated.  In 
such  instances  the  girl  quietly  submits,  but 
she  feels  wronged  whenever  she  allows  her 
mind   to   dwell    upon    the    situation.      She 

85 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

either  hides  her  hurt,  and  splendid  reserves 
of  enthusiasm  and  capacity  go  to  waste,  or 
her  zeal  and  emotions  are  turned  inward, 
and  the  result  is  an  unhappy  woman,  whose 
heart  is  consumed  by  vain  regrets  and 
desires. 

If  the  college  woman  is  not  thus  quietly 
reabsorbed,  she  is  even  reproached  for  her 
discontent.  She  is  told  to  be  devoted  to 
her  family,  inspiring  and  responsive  to  her 
social  circle,  and  to  give  the  rest  of  her 
time  to  further  self-improvement  and  enjoy- 
ment. She  expects  to  do  this,  and  responds 
to  these  claims  to  the  best  of  her  ability, 
even  heroically  sometimes.  But  where  is 
the  larger  life  of  which  she  has  dreamed 
so  long?  That  life  which  surrounds  and 
completes  the  individual  and  family  life.? 
She  has  been  taught  that  it  is  her  duty  to 
share  this  life,  and  her  highest  privilege 
to  extend  it.  This  divergence  between  her 
self-centred  existence  and  her  best  convic- 
tions becomes  constantly  more  apparent. 
But  the   situation   is    not    even   so   simple 

86 


FILIAL  RELATIONS 

as  a  conflict  between  her  affections  and 
her  intellectual  convictions,  although  even 
that  is  tumultuous  enough,  also  the  emo- 
tional nature  is  divided  against  itself.  The 
social  claim  is  a  demand  upon  the  emo- 
tions as  well  as  upon  the  intellect,  and  in 
ignoring  it  she  represses  not  only  her  con- 
victions but  lowers  her  springs  of  vitality. 
Her  life  is  full  of  contradictions.  She 
looks  out  into  the  world,  longing  that  some 
demand  be  made  upon  her  powers,  for 
they  are  too  untrained  to  furnish  an  initia- 
tive. When  her  health  gives  way  under 
this  strain,  as  it  often  does,  her  physician 
invariably  advises  a  rest.  But  to  be  put 
to  bed  and  fed  on  milk  is  not  what  she 
requires.  What  she  needs  is  simple, 
health-giving  activity,  which,  involving  the 
use  of  all  her  faculties,  shall  be  a  response 
to  all  the  claims  which  she  so  keenly 
feels. 

It  is  quite  true  that  the  family  often 
resents  her  first  attempts  to  be  part  of  a 
life   quite   outside    their    own,   because    the 

87 


DEMOCRACY   AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

college  woman  frequently  makes  these  first 
attempts  most  awkwardly ;  her  faculties 
have  not  been  trained  in  the  line  of  action. 
She  lacks  the  ability  to  apply  her  knowl- 
edge and  theories  to  life  itself  and  to  its 
complicated  situations.  This  is  largely  the 
fault  of  her  training  and  of  the  one-sidedness 
of  educational  methods.  The  colleges  have 
long  been  full  of  the  best  ethical  teaching, 
insisting  that  the  good  of  the  whole  must 
ultimately  be  the  measure  of  effort,  and 
that  the  individual  can  only  secure  his  own 
rights  as  he  labors  to  secure  those  of  others. 
But  while  the  teaching  has  included  an 
ever-broadening  range  of  obligation  and  has 
insisted  upon  the  recognition  of  the  claims 
of  human  brotherhood,  the  training  has 
been  singularly  individualistic ;  it  has  fos- 
tered ambitions  for  personal  distinction,  and 
has  trained  the  faculties  almost  exclusively 
in  the  direction  of  intellectual  accumula- 
tion. Doubtless,  woman's  education  is  at 
fault,  in  that  it  has  failed  to  recognize  cer- 
tain   needs,  and   has  failed  to  cultivate  and 

SB 


FILIAL  RELATIONS 

guide  the  larger  desires  of  which  all  gener- 
ous young  hearts  are  full. 

During  the  most  formative  years  of  life, 
it  gives  the  young  girl  no  contact  with  the 
feebleness  of  childhood,  the  pathos  of  suf- 
fering, or  the  needs  of  old  age.  It  gathers 
together  crude  youth  in  contact  only  with 
each  other  and  with  mature  men  and  women 
who  are  there  for  the  purpose  of  their  men- 
tal direction.  The  tenderest  promptings 
are  bidden  to  bide  their  time.  This  could 
only  be  justifiable  if  a  definite  outlet  were 
provided  when  they  leave  college.  Doubt- 
less the  need  does  not  differ  widely  in  men 
and  women,  but  women  not  absorbed  in  pro- 
fessional or  business  life,  in  the  years  imme- 
diately following  college,  are  baldly  brought 
face  to  face  with  the  deficiencies  of  their 
training.  Apparently  every  obstacle  is  re- 
moved, and  the  college  woman  is  at  last 
free  to  begin  the  active  life,  for  which,  dur- 
ing so  many  years,  she  has  been  preparing. 
But  during  this  so-called  preparation,  her 
faculties   have   been    trained   solely   for  ac- 

89 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

cumulation,  and  she  has  learned  to  utterly 
distrust  the  finer  impulses  of  her  nature, 
which  would  naturally  have  connected  her 
with  human  interests  outside  of  her  family 
and  her  own  immediate  social  circle.  All 
through  school  and  college  the  young  soul 
dreamed  of  self-sacrifice,  of  succor  to  the 
helpless  and  of  tenderness  to  the  unfortu- 
nate. We  persistently  distrust  these  desires, 
and,  unless  they  follow  well-defined  lines, 
we  repress  them  with  every  device  of  con- 
vention and  caution. 

One  summer  the  writer  went  from  a  two 
weeks'  residence  in  East  London,  where 
she  had  become  sick  and  bewildered  by 
the  sights  and  sounds  encountered  there, 
directly  to  Switzerland.  She  found  the 
beaten  routes  of  travel  filled  with  young 
English  men  and  women  who  could  walk 
many  miles  a  day,  and  who  could  climb 
peaks  so  inaccessible  that  the  feats  received 
honorable  mention  in  Alpine  journals,  —  a 
result  which  filled  their  families  with  joy 
and   pride.     These   young   people   knew  to 

90 


FILIAL*  RELATIONS 

a  nicety  the  proper  diet  and  clothing  which 
would  best  contribute  toward  endurance. 
Everything  was  very  fine  about  them  save 
their  motive  power.  The  writer  does  not 
refer  to  the  hard-worked  men  and  women 
who  were  taking  a  vacation,  but  to  the 
leisured  young  people,  to  whom  this  period 
was  the  most  serious  of  the  year,  and  filled 
with  the  most  strenuous  exertion.  They 
did  not,  of  course,  thoroughly  enjoy  it, 
for  we  are  too  complicated  to  be  content 
with  mere  exercise.  Civilization  has  bound 
us  too  closely  with  our  brethren  for  any 
one  of  us  to  be  long  happy  in  the  cultiva- 
tion of  mere  individual  force  or  in  the 
accumulation  of  mere  muscular  energy. 

With  Whitechapel  constantly  in  mind,  it 
was  difficult  not  to  advise  these  young 
people  to  use  some  of  this  muscular  energy 
of  which  they  were  so  proud,  in  cleaning 
neglected  alleys  and  paving  soggy  streets. 
Their  stores  of  enthusiasm  might  stir  to 
energy  the  listless  men  and  women  of 
East     London     and     utilize     latent     social 

9» 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

forces.  The  exercise  would  be  quite  as 
good,  the  need  of  endurance  as  great,  the 
care  for  proper  dress  and  food  as  impor- 
tant; but  the  motives  for  action  would  be 
turned  from  selfish  ones  into  social  ones. 
Such  an  appeal  would  doubtless  be  met 
with  a  certain  response  from  the  young 
people,  but  would  never  be  countenanced 
by  their  families  for  an  instant. 

Fortunately  a  beginning  has  been  made 
in  another  direction,  and  a  few  parents  have 
already  begun  to  consider  even  their  little 
children  in  relation  to  society  as  well  as  to 
the  family.  The  young  mothers  who  attend 
"  Child  Study "  classes  have  a  larger  notion 
of  parenthood  and  expect  given  character- 
istics from  their  children,  at  certain  ages 
and  under  certain  conditions.  They  quite 
calmly  watch  the  various  attempts  of  a  child 
to  assert  his  individuality,  which  so  often 
takes  the  form  of  opposition  to  the  wishes 
of  the  family  and  to  the  rule  of  the  house- 
hold. They  recognize  as  acting  under  the 
same  law  of  development  the  little  child  of 

92 


FILIAL   RELATIONS 

three  who  persistently  runs  away  and  pre- 
tends not  to  hear  his  mother's  voice,  the  boy 
of  ten  who  violently,  although  temporarily, 
resents  control  of  any  sort,  and  the  grown-up 
son  who,  by  an  individualized  and  trained 
personality,  is  drawn  into  pursuits  and 
interests  quite  alien  to  those  of  his  family. 
This  attempt  to  take  the  parental  relation 
somewhat  away  from  mere  personal  expe- 
rience, as  well  as  the  increasing  tendency 
of  parents  to  share  their  children's  pur- 
suits and  interests,  will  doubtless  finally 
result  in  a  better  understanding  of  the 
social  obligation.  The  understanding,  which 
results  from  identity  of  interests,  would 
seem  to  confirm  the  conviction  that  in  the 
complicated  life  of  to-day  there  is  no 
education  so  admirable  as  that  education 
which  comes  from  participation  in  the  con- 
stant trend  of  events.  There  is  no  doubt 
that  most  of  the  misunderstandings  of  life 
are  due  to  partial  intelligence,  because  our 
experiences  have  been  so  unlike  that  we 
cannot   comprehend   each    other.     The   old 

93 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

difficulties  incident  to  the  clash  of  two 
codes  of  morals  must  drop  away,  as  the 
experiences  of  various  members  of  the 
family  become  larger  and  more  identical. 
At  the  present  moment,  however,  many  of 
those  difficulties  still  exist  and  may  be  seen 
all  about  us.  In  order  to  illustrate  the 
situation  baldly,  and  at  the  same  time  to 
put  it  dramatically,  it  may  be  well  to  take 
an  instance  concerning  which  we  have  no 
personal  feeling.  The  tragedy  of  King 
Lear  has  been  selected,  although  we  have 
been  accustomed  so  long  to  give  him  our 
sympathy  as  the  victim  of  the  ingratitude 
of  his  two  older  daughters,  and  of  the 
apparent  coldness  of  Cordelia,  that  we 
have  not  sufficiently  considered  the  weak- 
ness of  his  fatherhood,  revealed  by  the  fact 
that  he  should  get  himself  into  so  entangled 
and  unhappy  a  relation  to  all  of  his  chil- 
dren. In  our  pity  for  Lear,  we  fail 
to  analyze  his  character.  The  King  on 
his  throne  exhibits  utter  lack  of  self- 
control.     The  King  in  the  storm  gives  way 

94 


FILIAL  RELATIONS 

to  the  same  emotion,  in  repining  over 
the  wickedness  of  his  children,  which  he 
formerly  exhibited  in  his  indulgent  treat- 
ment of  them. 

It  might  be  illuminating  to  discover 
wherein  he  had  failed,  and  why  his  old 
age  found  him  roofless  in  spite  of  the  fact 
that  he  strenuously  urged  the  family  claim 
with  his  whole  conscience.  At  the  open- 
ing of  the  drama  he  sat  upon  his  throne, 
ready  for  the  enjoyment  which  an  indul- 
gent parent  expects  when  he  has  given 
gifts  to  his  children.  From  the  two  elder, 
the  responses  for  the  division  of  his  lands 
were  graceful  and  fitting,  but  he  longed 
to  hear  what  Cordelia,  his  youngest  and 
best  beloved  child,  would  say.  He  looked 
toward  her  expectantly,  but  instead  of 
delight  and  gratitude  there  was  the  first 
dawn  of  character.  Cordelia  made  the 
awkward  attempt  of  an  untrained  soul  to 
be  honest  and  scrupulously  to  express 
her  inmost  feeling.  The  king  was  baffled 
and    distressed    by    this    attempt    at    self- 

95 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

expression.  It  was  new  to  him  that  his 
daughter  should  be  moved  by  a  principle 
obtained  outside  himself,  which  even  his 
imagination  could  not  follow;  that  she  had 
caught  the  notion  of  an  existence  in  which 
her  relation  as  a  daughter  played  but  a 
part.  She  was  transformed  by  a  dignity 
which  recast  her  speech  and  made  it  self- 
contained.  She  found  herself  in  the  sweep 
of  a  feeling  so  large  that  the  immediate 
loss  of  a  kingdom  seemed  of  little  conse- 
quence to  her.  Even  an  act  which  might 
be  construed  as  disrespect  to  her  father  was 
justified  in  her  eyes,  because  she  was  vainly 
striving  to  fill  out  this  larger  conception 
of  duty.  The  test  which  comes  sooner  or 
later  to  many  parents  had  come  to  Lear,  to 
maintain  the  tenderness  of  the  relation 
between  father  and  child,  after  that  rela- 
tion had  become  one  between  adults,  to  be 
content  with  the  responses  made  by  the 
adult  child  to  the  family  claim,  while  at 
the  same  time  she  responded  to  the  claims 
of  the  rest  of  life.     The  mind  of  Lear  was 

96 


FILIAL  RELATIONS 

not  big  enough  for  this  test;  he  failed 
to  see  anything  but  the  personal  slight 
Involved,  and  the  ingratitude  alone 
reached  him.  It  was  impossible  for  him 
to  calmly  watch  his  child  developing 
beyond  the  stretch  of  his  own  mind  and 
sympathy. 

That  a  man  should  be  so  absorbed  in  his 
own  indignation  as  to  fail  to  apprehend  his 
child's  thought,  that  he  should  lose  his  af- 
fection in  his  anger,  simply  reveals  the  fact 
that  his  own  emotions  are  dearer  to  him 
than  his  sense  of  paternal  obligation.  Lear 
apparently  also  ignored  the  common  ances- 
try of  Cordelia  and  himself,  and  forgot  her 
royal  inheritance  of  magnanimity.  He  had 
thought  of  himself  so  long  as  a  noble  and 
indulgent  father  that  he  had  lost  the  fac- 
ulty by  which  he  might  perceive  himself 
In  the  wrong.  Even  In  the  midst  of  the 
storm  he  declared  himself  more  sinned 
against  than  sinning.  He  could  believe 
any  amount  of  kindness  and  goodness  of 
himself,  but  could  imagine  no  fidelity  on 
H  97 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

the  part  of  Cordelia  unless  she  gave  him 
the  sign  he  demanded. 

At  length  he  suffered  many  hardships; 
his  spirit  was  buffeted  and  broken ;  he 
lost  his  reason  as  well  as  his  kingdom ; 
but  for  the  first  time  his  experience  was 
identical  with  the  experience  of  the  men 
around  him,  and  he  came  to  a  larger  con- 
ception of  life.  He  put  himself  in  the  place 
of  "  the  poor  naked  wretches,"  and  un- 
expectedly found  healing  and  comfort.  He 
took  poor  Tim  in  his  arms  from  a  sheer 
desire  for  human  contact  and  animal  warmth, 
a  primitive  and  genuine  need,  through  which 
he  suddenly  had  a  view  of  the  world  which 
he  had  never  had  from  his  throne,  and 
from  this  moment  his  heart  began  to  turn 
toward  Cordelia. 

In  reading  the  tragedy  of  King  Lear, 
Cordelia  receives  a  full  share  of  our  cen- 
sure. Her  first  words  are  cold,  and  we  are 
shocked  by  her  lack  of  tenderness.  Why 
should  she  ignore  her  father's  need  for  in- 
dulgence,   and    be    unwilling    to  give   him 

98 


FILIAL  RELATIONS 

what  he  so  obviously  craved?  We  see  in 
the  old  king  "  the  over-mastering  desire  of 
being  beloved,  selfish,  and  yet  characteristic 
of  the  selfishness  of  a  loving  and  kindly 
nature  alone."  His  eagerness  produces  in 
us  a  strange  pity  for  him,  and  we  are  im- 
patient that  his  youngest  and  best-beloved 
child  cannot  feel  this,  even  in  the  midst  of 
her  search  for  truth  and  her  newly  acquired 
sense  of  a  higher  duty.  It  seems  to  us  a 
narrow  conception  that  would  break  thus 
abruptly  with  the  past  and  would  assume 
that  her  father  had  no  part  in  the  new  life. 
We  want  to  remind  her  "  that  pity,  mem- 
ory, and  faithfulness  are  natural  ties,"  and 
surely  as  much  to  be  prized  as  is  the  devel- 
opment of  her  own  soul.  We  do  not  admire 
the  Cordelia  who  through  her  self-absorp- 
tion deserts  her  father,  as  we  later  admire 
the  same  woman  who  comes  back  from 
France  that  she  may  include  her  father  in 
her  happiness  and  freer  life.  The  first  had 
selfishly  taken  her  salvation  for  herself  alone, 
and  it  was  not  until  her  conscience  had  de- 

99 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

veloped  in  her  new  life  that  she  was  driven 
back  to  her  father,  where  she  perished, 
drawn  into  the  cruelty  and  wrath  which 
had  now  become  objective  and  tragic. 

Historically  considered,  the  relation  of 
Lear  to  his  children  was  archaic  and  bar- 
baric, indicating  merely  the  beginning  of 
a  family  life  since  developed.  His  paternal 
expression  was  one  of  domination  and  indul- 
gence, without  the  perception  of  the  needs 
of  his  children,  without  any  anticipation  of 
their  entrance  into  a  wider  life,  or  any  belief 
that  they  could  have  a  worthy  life  apart 
from  him.  If  that  rudimentary  conception 
of  family  life  ended  in  such  violent  disaster, 
the  fact  that  we  have  learned  to  be  more 
decorous  in  our  conduct  does  not  demon- 
strate that  by  following  the  same  line  of 
theory  we  may  not  reach  a  like  misery. 

Wounded  affection  there  is  sure  to  be, 
but  this  could  be  reduced  to  a  modicum  if 
we  could  preserve  a  sense  of  the  relation  of 
the  individual  to  the  family,  and  of  the  latter 
to  society,  and  if  we  had  been  given  a  code 

lOO 


FILIAL  RELATIONS 

of  ethics  dealing  with  these  larger  relation- 
ships, instead  of  a  code  designed  to  apply 
so  exclusively  to  relationships  obtaining  only 
between  individuals. 

Doubtless  the  clashes  and  jars  which  we 
all  feel  most  keenly  are  those  which  occur 
when  two  standards  of  morals,  both  honestly 
held  and  believed  in,  are  brought  sharply 
together.  The  awkwardness  and  constraint 
we  experience  when  two  standards  of  con- 
ventions and  manners  clash  but  feebly  pre- 
figure this  deeper  difference. 


lOI 


CHAPTER    IV 

Household  Adjustment 

If  we  could  only  be  judged  or  judge  other 
people  by  purity  of  motive,  life  would  be 
much  simplified,  but  that  would  be  to  aban- 
don the  contention  made  in  the  first  chapter, 
that  the  processes  of  life  are  as  important  as 
its  aims.  We  can  all  recall  acquaintances  of 
whose  integrity  of  purpose  we  can  have  no 
doubt,  but  who  cause  much  confusion  as 
they  proceed  to  the  accomplishment  of  that 
purpose,  who  indeed  are  often  insensible  to 
their  own  mistakes  and  harsh  in  their  judg- 
ments of  other  people  because  they  are  so 
confident  of  their  own  inner  integrity. 

This  tendency  to  be  so  sure  of  integrity 
of  purpose  as  to  be  unsympathetic  and  hard- 
ened to  the  means  by  which  it  is  accom- 
plished, is  perhaps   nowhere  so   obvious  as 

I02 


HOUSEHOLD  ADJUSTMENT 

in  the  household  itself.  It  nowhere  operates 
as  so  constant  a  force  as  in  the  minds  of 
the  women  who  in  all  the  perplexity  of  in- 
dustrial transition  are  striving  to  administer 
domestic  affairs.  The  ethics  held  by  them 
are  for  the  most  part  the  individual  and 
family  codes,  untouched  by  the  larger  social 
conceptions. 

These  women,  rightly  confident  of  their 
household  and  family  integrity  and  holding 
to  their  own  code  of  morals,  fail  to  see  the 
household  in  its  social  aspect.  Possibly  no 
relation  has  been  so  slow  to  respond  to  the 
social  ethics  which  we  are  now  considering,  as 
that  between  the  household  employer  and  the 
household  employee,  or,  as  it  is  still  sometimes 
called,  that  between  mistress  and  servant. 

This  persistence  of  the  individual  code 
in  relation  to  the  household  may  be  partly 
accounted  for  by  the  fact  that  orderly  life 
and,  in  a  sense,  civilization  itself,  grew  from 
the  concentration  of  interest  in  one  place, 
and  that  moral  feeling  first  became  centred 
in  a  limited  number  of  persons.  From  the 
103 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

familiar  proposition  that  the  home  began  be- 
cause the  mother  was  obHged  to  stay  in  one* 
spot  in  order  to  cherish  the  child,  we  can  see 
a  foundation  for  the  belief  that  if  women  are 
much  away  from  home,  the  home  itself  will  be 
destroyed  and  all  ethical  progress  endangered. 
We  have  further  been  told  that  the  earli- 
est dances  and  social  gatherings  were  most 
questionable  in  their  purposes,  and  that  it 
was,  therefore,  the  good  and  virtuous  women 
who  first  stayed  at  home,  until  gradually  the 
two  —  the  woman  who  stayed  at  home  and 
the  woman  who  guarded  her  virtue  —  became 
synonymous.  A  code  of  ethics  was  thus 
developed  in  regard  to  woman's  conduct, 
and  her  duties  were  logically  and  carefully 
limited  to  her  own  family  circle.  When  it 
became  impossible  to  adequately  minister  to 
the  needs  of  this  circle  without  the  help  of 
many  people  who  did  not  strictly  belong  to 
the  family,  although  they  were  part  of  the 
household,  they  were  added  as  aids  merely 
for  supplying  these  needs.  When  women 
were  the  brewers  and  bakers,  the  fullers, 
104 


HOUSEHOLD   ADJUSTMENT 

dyers,  spinners,  and  weavers,  the  soap  and 
candle  makers,  they  administered  large  in- 
dustries, but  solely  from  the  family  point 
of  view.  Only  a  few  hundred  years  ago, 
woman  had  complete  control  of  the  manu- 
facturing of  many  commodities  which  now 
figure  so  largely  in  commerce,  and  it  is  evi- 
dent that  she  let  the  manufacturing  of  these 
commodities  go  into  the  hands  of  men,  as 
soon  as  organization  and  a  larger  concep- 
tion of  their  production  were  required.  She 
felt  no  responsibility  for  their  management 
when  they  were  taken  from  the  home  to  the 
factory,  for  deeper  than  her  instinct  to  manu- 
facture food  and  clothing  for  her  family  was 
her  instinct  to  stay  with  them,  and  by  iso- 
lation and  care  to  guard  them  from  evil. 

She  had  become  convinced  that  a  woman's 
duty  extended  only  to  her  own  family,  and 
that  the  world  outside  had  no  claim  upon 
her.  The  British  matron  ordered  her 
maidens  aright,  when  they  were  spinning 
under  her  own  roof,  but  she  felt  no  com- 
punction of  conscience  when  the  morals 
105 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

and  health  of  young  girls  were  endangered 
in  the  overcrowded  and  insanitary  factories. 
The  code  of  family  ethics  was  established 
in  her  mind  so  firmly  that  it  excluded  any 
notion  of  social  effort. 

It  is  quite  possible  to  accept  this  expla- 
nation of  the  origin  of  morals,  and  to  believe 
that  the  preservation  of  the  home  is  at  the 
foundation  of  all  that  is  best  in  civiliza- 
tion, without  at  the  same  time  insisting 
that  the  separate  preparation  and  serving 
of  food  is  an  inherent  part  of  the  structure 
and  sanctity  of  the  home,  or  that  those 
who  minister  to  one  household  shall  minis- 
ter to  that  exclusively.  But  to  make  this 
distinction  seems  difficult,  and  almost  in- 
variably the  sense  of  obligation  to  the 
family  becomes  confused  with  a  certain 
sort  of  domestic  management.  The  moral 
issue  involved  in  one  has  become  inextri- 
cably combined  with  the  industrial  difficulty 
involved  in  the  other,  and  it  is  at  this 
point  that  so  many  perplexed  housekeep- 
ers, through  the  confusion  of  the  two 
io6 


HOUSEHOLD   ADJUSTMENT 

problems,    take   a   difficult     and    untenable 
position. 

There  are  economic  as  well  as  ethical 
reasons  for  this  survival  of  a  simpler  code. 
The  wife  of  a  workingman  still  has  a 
distinct  economic  value  to  her  husband. 
She  cooks,  cleans,  washes,  and  mends  —  ser- 
vices for  which,  before  his  marriage,  he  paid 
ready  money.  The  wife  of  the  successful 
business  or  professional  man  does  not  do 
this.  He  continues  to  pay  for  his  cooking, 
house  service,  and  washing.  The  mending, 
however,  is  still  largely  performed  by  his 
wife;  indeed,  the  stockings  are  pathetically 
retained  and  their  darning  given  an  exag- 
gerated importance,  as  if  women  instinc- 
tively felt  that  these  mended  stockings 
were  the  last  remnant  of  the  entire  house- 
hold industry,  of  which  they  were  formerly 
mistresses.  But  one  industry,  the  cooking 
and  serving  of  foods  to  her  own  family, 
woman  has  never  relinquished.  It  has, 
therefore,  never  been  organized,  either  by 
men  or  women,  and  is  in  an  undeveloped 
107 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

state.  Each  employer  of  household  labor 
views  it  solely  from  the  family  standpoint. 
The  ethics  prevailing  in  regard  to  it  are 
distinctly  personal  and  unsocial,  and  result 
in  the  unique  isolation  of  the  household 
employee. 

As  industrial  conditions  have  changed, 
the  household  has  simplified,  from  the 
mediaeval  affair  of  journeymen,  apprentices, 
and  maidens  who  spun  and  brewed  to  the 
family  proper;  to  those  who  love  each 
other  and  live  together  in  ties  of  affection 
and  consanguinity.  Were  this  process  com- 
plete, we  should  have  no  problem  of  house- 
hold employment.  But,  even  in  households 
comparatively  humble,  there  is  still  one 
alien,  one  who  is  neither  loved  nor  loving. 

The  modern  family  has  dropped  the  man 
who  made  its  shoes,  the  woman  who  spun 
its  clothes,  and,  to  a  large  extent,  the 
woman  who  washes  them,  but  it  stoutly 
refuses  to  drop  the  woman  who  cooks  its 
food  and  ministers  directly  to  its  individ- 
ual comfort;  it  strangely  insists  that  to  do 
io8 


HOUSEHOLD  ADJUSTMENT 

that  would  be  to  destroy  the  family  life 
itself.  The  cook  is  uncomfortable,  the 
family  is  uncomfortable;  but  it  will  not 
drop  her  as  all  her  fellow-workers  have 
been  dropped,  although  the  cook  herself 
insists  upon  it.  So  far  has  this  insistence 
gone  that  every  possible  concession  is  made 
to  retain  her.  The  writer  knows  an  em- 
ployer in  one  of  the  suburbs  who  built  a 
bay  at  the  back  of  her  house  so  that  her  cook 
might  have  a  pleasant  room  in  which  to 
sleep,  and  another  in  which  to  receive  her 
friends.  This  employer  naturally  felt  ag- 
grieved when  the  cook  refused  to  stay  in 
her  bay.  Viewed  in  an  historic  light,  this 
employer  might  quite  as  well  have  added  a 
bay  to  her  house  for  her  shoemaker,  and 
then  deemed  him  ungrateful  because  he 
declined  to  live  in  it. 

A  listener,  attentive  to  a  conversation  be- 
tween two  employers  of  household  labor, — 
and  we  certainly  all  have  opportunity  to  hear 
such  conversations,  —  would  often  discover  a 
tone  implying  that  the  employer  was  abused 
109 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

and  put  upon ;  that  she  was  strugghng  with  the 
problem  solely  because  she  was  thus  serving 
her  family  and  performing  her  social  duties ; 
that  otherwise  it  would  be  a  great  relief  to  her 
to  abandon  the  entire  situation,  and  "  never 
have  a  servant  in  her  house  again."  Did 
she  follow  this  impulse,  she  would  simply 
yield  to  the  trend  of  her  times  and  accept 
the  present  system  of  production.  She  would 
be  in  line  with  the  industrial  organization 
of  her  age.  Were  she  in  line  ethically,  she 
would  have  to  believe  that  the  sacredness 
and  beauty  of  family  life  do  not  consist  in 
the  processes  of  the  separate  preparation  of 
food,  but  in  sharing  the  corporate  life  of  the 
community,  and  in  making  the  family  the 
unit  of  that  life. 

The  selfishness  of  a  modern  mistress,  who, 
in  her  narrow  social  ethics,  insists  that  those 
who  minister  to  the  comforts  of  her  family 
shall  minister  to  it  alone,  that  they  shall  not 
only  be  celibate,  but  shall  be  cut  off,  more  or 
less,  from  their  natural  social  ties,  excludes 
the  best  working-people  from  her  service, 
no 


HOUSEHOLD   ADJUSTMENT 

A  man  of  dignity  and  ability  is  quite  will- 
ing to  come  into  a  house  to  tune  a  piano. 
Another  man  of  mechanical  skill  will  come 
to  put  up  window  shades.  Another  of  less 
skill,  but  of  perfect  independence,  will  come 
to  clean  and  relay  a  carpet.  These  men 
would  all  resent  the  situation  and  consider 
<^^it  quite  impossible  if  it  implied  the  giving 
up  of  their  family  and  social  ties,  and  living 
under  the  roof  of  the  household  requiring 
their  services. 

The  isolation  of  the  household  employee 
is  perhaps  inevitable  so  long  as  the  employer 
holds  her  belated  ethics;  but  the  situation 
is  made  even  more  difficult  by  the  character 
and  capacity  of  the  girls  who  enter  this 
industry.  In  any  great  industrial  change 
the  workmen  who  are  permanently  displaced 
are  those  who  are  too  dull  to  seize  upon 
changed  conditions.  The  workmen  who 
have  knowledge  and  insight,  who  are  in 
touch  with  their  time,  quickly  reorganize. 

The  general  statement  may  be  made  that 
the  enterprising  girls  of  the  community  go 

III 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

into  factories,  and  the  less  enterprising  go 
into  households,  although  there  are  many 
exceptions.  It  is  not  a  question  of  skill,  of 
energy,  of  conscientious  work,  which  will 
make  a  girl  rise  industrially  while  she  is  in 
the  household;  she  is  not  in  the  rising  move- 
ment. She  is  belated  in  a  class  composed 
of  the  unprogressive  elements  of  the  com- '' 
munity,  which  is  recruited  constantly  by 
those  from  the  ranks  of  the  incompetent, 
by  girls  who  are  learning  the  language,  girls 
who  are  timid  and  slow,  or  girls  who  look 
at  life  solely  from  the  savings-bank  point 
of  view.  The  distracted  housekeeper  strug- 
gles with  these  unprogressive  girls,  holding 
to  them  not  even  the  well-defined  and  inde- 
pendent relation  of  employer  and  employed, 
but  the  hazy  and  constantly  changing  one 
of  mistress  to  servant. 

The  latter  relation  is  changing  under 
pressure  from  various  directions.  In  our 
increasing  democracy  the  notion  of  personal 
service  is  constantly  becoming  more  dis- 
tasteful, conflicting,  as  it  does,  with  the  more 

112 


HOUSEHOLD  ADJUSTMENT 

modern  notion  of  personal  dignity.  Personal 
ministration  to  the  needs  of  childhood,  ill- 
ness, and  old  age  seem  to  us  reasonable,  and 
the  democratic  adjustment  in  regard  to  them 
is  being  made.  The  first  two  are  constantly- 
raised  nearer  to  the  level  of  a  profession,  and 
there  is  little  doubt  that  the  third  will  soon 
follow.  But  personal  ministrations  to  a  nor- 
mal, healthy  adult,  consuming  the  time  and 
energy  of  another  adult,  we  find  m"ore  difficult 
to  reconcile  to  our  theories  of  democracy. 

A  factory  employer  parts  with  his  men  at 
the  factory  gates  at  the  end  of  a  day's  work ; 
they  go  to  their  homes  as  he  goes  to  his,  in 
the  assumption  that  they  both  do  what  they 
want  and  spend  their  money  as  they  please  ; 
but  this  solace  of  equality  outside  of  working 
hours  is  denied  the  bewildered  employer  of 
household  labor. 

She  is  obliged  to  live  constantly  in  the 
same  house  with  her  employee,  and  because 
of  certain  equalities  in  food  and  shelter  she 
is  brought  more  sharply  face  to  face  with 
the  mental  and  social  inequalities. 
I  113 


DEMOCRACY  AND  SOCIAL  ETHICS 

The  difficulty  becomes  more  apparent  as 
the  character  of  the  work  performed  by  the 
so-called  servant  is  less  absolutely  useful  and 
may  be  merely  time  consuming.  A  kind- 
hearted  woman  who  will  complacently  take 
an  afternoon  drive,  leaving  her  cook  to  pre- 
pare the  five  courses  of  a  "little  dinner  for 
only  ten  guests,"  will  not  be  nearly  so  com- 
fortable the  next  evening  when  she  speeds 
her  daughter  to  a  dance,  conscious  that  her 
waitress  must  spend  the  evening  in  dull  soli- 
tude on  the  chance  that  a  caller  or  two  may 
ring  the  door-bell. 

A  conscientious  employer  once  remarked 
to  the  writer:  "  In  England  it  must  be  much 
easier;  the  maid  does  not  look  and  dress  so 
like  your  daughter,  and  you  can  at  least  pre- 
tend that  she  doesn't  like  the  same  things. 
But  really,  my  new  waitress  is  quite  as 
pretty  and  stylish  as  my  daughter  is,  and  her 
wistful  look  sometimes  when  Mary  goes  off 
to  a  frolic  quite  breaks  my  heart." 

Too  many  employers  of  domestic  service 
have  always  been  exempt  from  manual  labor, 
114 


HOUSEHOLD   ADJUSTMENT 

and  therefore  constantly  impose  exacting  du- 
ties upon  employees,  the  nature  of  which  they 
do  not  understand  by  experience ;  there  is 
thus  no  curb  of  rationality  imposed  upon  the 
employer's  requirements  and  demands.  She 
is  totally  unlike  the  foreman  in  a  shop,  who 
has  only  risen  to  his  position  by  way  of  hav- 
ing actually  performed  with  his  own  hands 
all  the  work  of  the  men  he  directs.  There 
is  also  another  class  of  employers  of  do- 
mestic labor,  who  grow  capricious  and 
over-exacting  through  sheer  lack  of  larger 
interests  to  occupy  their  minds ;  it  is  equally 
bad  for  them  and  the  employee  that  the 
duties  of  the  latter  are  not  clearly  defined. 
Tolstoy  contends  that  an  exaggerated  notion 
of  cleanliness  has  developed  among  such 
employers,  which  could  never  have  been 
evolved  among  usefully  employed  people. 
He  points  to  the  fact  that  a  serving  man,  in 
order  that  his  hands  may  be  immaculately 
clean,  is  kept  from  performing  the  heavier 
work  of  the  household,  and  then  is  supplied 
with  a  tray,  upon  which  to  place  a  card,  in 
"5 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

order  that  even  his  clean  hands  may  not 
touch  it ;  later,  even  his  clean  hands  are  cov- 
ered with  a  pair  of  clean  white  gloves,  which 
hold  the  tray  upon  which  the  card  is  placed. 

If  it  were  not  for  the  undemocratic  ethics 
used  by  the  employers  of  domestics,  much 
work  now  performed  in  the  household  would 
be  done  outside,  as  is  true  of  many  products 
formerly  manufactured  in^  the  feudal  house- 
hold. The  worker  in  all  other  trades  has 
complete  control  of  his  own  time  after  the 
performance  of  definitely  limited  services,  his 
wages  are  paid  altogether  in  money  which  he 
may  spend  in  the  maintenance  of  a  separate 
home  life,  and  he  has  full  opportunity  to 
organize  with  the  other  workers  in  his  trade. 

The  domestic  employee  is  retained  in  the 
household  largely  because  her  "  mistress  " 
fatuously  believes  that  she  is  thus  maintain- 
ing the  sanctity  of  family  life. 

The  household  employee  has  no  regular 

opportunity  for  meeting  other  workers  of  her 

trade,  and  of  attaining  with  them  the  dignity 

of  a  corporate  body.     The  industrial  isola- 

ii6 


HOUSEHOLD   ADJUSTMENT 

tion  of  the  household  employee  results,  as 
isolation  in  a  trade  must  always  result,  in  a 
lack  of  progress  in  the  methods  and  products 
of  that  trade,  and  a  lack  of  aspiration  and 
education  in  the  workman.  Whether  we 
recognize  this  isolation  as  a  cause  or  not,  we 
are  all  ready  to  acknowledge  that  household 
labor  has  been  in  some  way  belated;  that 
the  improvements  there  have  not  kept  up 
with  the  improvement  in  other  occupations. 
It  is  said  that  the  last  revolution  in  the 
processes  of  cooking  was  brought  about 
by  Count  Rumford,  who  died  a  hundred 
years  ago.  This  is  largely  due  to  the  lack 
of  esprit  de  corps  among  the  employees, 
which  keeps  them  collectively  from  fresh 
achievements,  as  the  absence  of  education  in 
the  individual  keeps  her  from  improving  her 
implements. 

Under  this  isolation,  not  only  must  one 
set  of  utensils  serve  divers  purposes,  and, 
as  a  consequence,  tend  to  a  lessened  vol- 
ume and  lower  quality  of  work,  but,  in- 
asmuch as  the  appliances  are  not  made 
117 


DEMOCRACY  AND  SOCIAL  ETHICS 

to  perform  the  fullest  work,  there  is  an 
amount  of  capital  invested  disproportionate 
to  the  product  when  measured  by  the  achieve- 
ment in  other  branches  of  industry.  More 
important  than  this  is  the  result  of  the 
isolation  upon  the  worker  herself.  There 
is  nothing  more  devastating  to  the  inven- 
tive faculty,  nor  fatal  to  a  flow  of  mind 
and  spirit,  than  the  constant  feeling  of 
loneliness  and  the  absence  of  that  fellow- 
ship which  makes  our  public  opinion.  If 
an  angry  foreman  reprimands  a  girl  for 
breaking  a  machine,  twenty  other  girls 
hear  him,  and  the  culprit  knows  perfectly 
well  their  opinion  as  to  the  justice  or  in- 
justice of  her  situation.  In  either  case  she 
bears  it  better  for  knowing  that,  and  not 
thinking  it  over  in  solitude.  If  a  house- 
hold employee  breaks  a  utensil  or  a  piece 
of  porcelain  and  is  reprimanded  by  her 
employer,  too  often  the  invisible  jury  is 
the  family  of  the  latter,  who  naturally  up- 
hold her  censorious  position  and  intensify 
the  feeling  of  loneliness  in  the  employee. 
ii8 


HOUSEHOLD  ADJUSTMENT 

The  household  employee,  in  addition  to 
her  industrial  isolation,  is  also  isolated 
socially.  It  is  well  to  remember  that  the 
household  employees  for  the  better  quar- 
ters of  the  city  and  suburbs  are  largely 
drawn  from  the  poorer  quarters,  which  are 
nothing  if  not  gregarious.  The  girl  is 
born  and  reared  in  a  tenement  house  full 
of  children.  She  goes  to  school  with  them, 
and  there  she  learns  to  march,  to  read,  and 
write  in  companionship  with  forty  others. 
When  she  is  old  enough  to  go  to  parties, 
those  she  attends  are  usually  held  in  a 
public  hall  and  are  crowded  with  dancers. 
If  she  works  in  a  factory,  she  walks  home 
with  many  other  girls,  in  much  the  same 
spirit  as  she  formerly  walked  to  school 
with  them.  She  mingles  with  the  young 
men  she  knows,  in  frank,  economic,  and 
social  equality.  Until  she  marries  she  re- 
mains at  home  with  no  special  break  or 
change  in  her  family  and  social  life.  If 
she  is  employed  in  a  household,  this  is  not 
true.  Suddenly  all  the  conditions  of  her 
119 


DEMOCRACY   AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

life  are  altered.  This  change  may  be 
wholesome  for  her,  but  it  is  not  easy,  and 
thought  of  the  savings-bank  does  not 
cheer  one  much,  when  one  is  twenty. 
She  is  isolated  from  the  people  with 
whom  she  has  been  reared,  with  whom  she 
has  gone  to  school,  and  among  whom  she 
expects  to  live  when  she  marries.  She  is 
naturally  lonely  and  constrained  away  from 
them,  and  the  "  new  maid "  often  seems 
"queer"  to  her  employer's  family.  She 
does  not  care  to  mingle  socially  with  the 
people  in  whose  house  she  is  employed, 
as  the  girl  from  the  country  often  does, 
but  she  suffers  horribly  from  loneliness. 

This  wholesome,  instinctive  dread  of  social 
isolation  is  so  strong  that,  as  every  city 
intelligence-office  can  testify,  the  filling  of 
situations  is  easier,  or  more  difficult,  in 
proportion  as  the  place  offers  more  or 
less  companionship.  Thus,  the  easy  situa- 
tion to  fill  is  always  the  city  house,  with 
five  or  six  employees,  shading  off  into  the 
more    difficult    suburban    home,    with   two, 


HOUSEHOLD  ADJUSTMENT 

and  the  utterly  impossible  lonely  country 
house. 

There  are  suburban  employers  of  house- 
hold labor  who  make  heroic  efforts  to 
supply  domestic  and  social  life  to  their 
employees ;  who  take  the  domestic  employee 
to  drive,  arrange  to  have  her  invited  out 
occasionally ;  who  supply  her  with  books 
and  papers  and  companionship.  Nothing 
could  be  more  praiseworthy  in  motive,  but 
it  is  seldom  successful  in  actual  operation, 
resulting  as  it  does  in  a  simulacrum  of 
companionship.  The  employee  may  have 
a  genuine  friendship  for  her  employer,  and 
a  pleasure  in  her  companionship,  or  she 
may  not  have,  and  the  unnaturalness  of  the 
situation  comes  from  the  insistence  that  she 
has,  merely  because  of  the  propinquity. 

The  unnaturalness  of  the  situation  is 
intensified  by  the  fact  that  the  employee 
is  practically  debarred  by  distance  and 
lack  of  leisure  from  her  natural  associates, 
and  that  her  employer  sympathetically  in- 
sists  upon   filling   the  vacancy  in   interests 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

and  affections  by  her  own  tastes  and  friend- 
ship. She  may  or  may  not  succeed,  but  the 
employee  should  not  be  thus  dependent 
upon  the  good  will  of  her  employer.  That 
in  itself  is  undemocratic. 

The  difficulty  is  increasing  by  a  sense  of 
social  discrimination  which  the  household 
employee  keenly  feels  is  against  her  and  in 
favor  of  the  factory  girls,  in  the  minds  of  the 
young  men  of  her  acquaintance.  Women 
seeking  employment,  understand  perfectly 
well  this  feeling  among  mechanics,  doubtless 
quite  unjustifiable,  but  it  acts  as  a  strong  in- 
ducement toward  factory  labor.  The  writer 
has  long  ceased  to  apologize  for  the  views  and 
opinions  of  working  people,  being  quite  sure 
that  on  the  whole  they  are  quite  as  wise  and 
quite  as  foolish  as  the  views  and  opinions 
of  other  people,  but  that  this  particularly 
foolish  opinion  of  young  mechanics  is  widely 
shared  by  the  employing  class  can  be  easily 
demonstrated.  The  contrast  is  further  ac- 
centuated by  the  better  social  position  of  the 
factory  girl,  and  the  advantages  provided  for 


HOUSEHOLD  ADJUSTMENT 

her  in  the  way  of  lunch  clubs,  social  clubs, 
and  vacation  homes,  from  which  girls  per- 
forming household  labor  are  practically 
excluded  by  their  hours  of  work,  their  geo- 
graphical situation,  and  a  curious  feeling 
that  they  are  not  as  interesting  as  factory 
girls. 

This  separation  from  her  natural  social 
ties  affects,  of  course,  her  opportunity  for 
family  life.  It  is  well  to  remember  that 
women,  as  a  rule,  are  devoted  to  their 
families ;  that  they  want  to  live  with  their 
parents,  their  brothers  and  sisters,  and  kins- 
folk, and  will  sacrifice  much  to  accomplish 
this.  This  devotion  is  so  universal  that  it 
is  impossible  to  ignore  it  when  we  consider 
women  as  employees.  Young  unmarried 
women  are  not  detached  from  family  claims 
and  requirements  as  young  men  are,  and 
are  more  ready  and  steady  in  their  response 
to  the  needs  of  aged  parents  and  the  help- 
less members  of  the  family.  But  women 
performing  labor  in  households  have  peculiar 
difficulties    in    responding    to   their    family 

123 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

claims,  and  are  practically  dependent  upon 
their  employers  for  opportunities  of  even 
seeing  their  relatives  and  friends. 

Curiously  enough  the  same  devotion  to 
family  life  and  quick  response  to  its  claims, 
on  the  part  of  the  employer,  operates  against 
the  girl  employed  in  household  labor,  and  still 
further  contributes  to  her  isolation. 

The  employer  of  household  labor,  in  her 
zeal  to  preserve  her  own  family  life  intact  and 
free  from  intrusion,  acts  inconsistently  and 
grants  to  her  cook,  for  instance,  but  once  or 
twice  a  week,  such  opportunity  for  untram- 
melled association  with  her  relatives  as  the 
employer's  family  claims  constantly.  This  in 
itself  is  undemocratic,  in  that  it  makes  a  dis- 
tinction between  the  value  of  family  life  for 
one  set  of  people  as  over  against  another; 
or,  rather,  claims  that  one  set  of  people  are 
of  so  much  less  importance  than  another, 
that  a  valuable  side  of  life  pertaining  to 
them  should  be  sacrificed  for  the  other. 

This  cannot  be  defended  theoretically,  and 
no  doubt  much  of  the  talk  among  the  em- 
124 


HOUSEHOLD   ADJUSTMENT 

ployers  of  household  labor,  that  their  em- 
ployees are  carefully  shielded  and  cared  for, 
and  that  it  is  so  much  better  for  a  girl's  health 
and  morals  to  work  in  a  household  than  to 
work  in  a  factory,  comes  from  a  certain  uneasi- 
ness of  conscience,  and  from  a  desire  to  make 
up  by  individual  scruple  what  would  be  done 
much  more  freely  and  naturally  by  public 
opinion  if  it  had  an  untrammelled  chance  to 
assert  itself.  One  person,  or  a  number  of 
isolated  persons,  however  conscientious,  can- 
not perform  this  office  of  public  opinion. 
Certain  hospitals  in  London  have  con- 
tributed statistics  showing  that  seventy-eight 
per  cent  of  illegitimate  children  born  there 
are  the  children  of  girls  working  in  house- 
holds. These  girls  are  certainly  not  less 
virtuous  than  factory  girls,  for  they  come 
from  the  same  families  and  have  had  the 
same  training,  but  the  girls  who  remain  at 
home  and  work  in  factories  meet  their  lovers 
naturally  and  easily,  their  fathers  and  broth- 
ers know  the  men,  and  unconsciously  ex- 
ercise a  certain  supervision  and  a  certain 
"5 


DEMOCRACY   AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

direction  in  their  choice  of  companionship. 
The  household  employees  living  in  another 
part  of  the  city,  away  from  their  natural 
family  and  social  ties,  depend  upon  chance 
for  the  lovers  whom  they  meet.  The  lover 
may  be  the  young  man  who  delivers  for  the 
butcher  or  grocer,  or  the  solitary  friend, 
who  follows  the  girl  from  her  own  part  of 
town  and  pursues  unfairly  the  advantage 
which  her  social  loneliness  and  isolation 
afford  him.  There  is  no  available  public 
opinion  nor  any  standard  of  convention  which 
the  girl  can  apply  to  her  own  situation. 

It  would  be  easy  to  point  out  many  incon- 
veniences arising  from  the  fact  that  the  old 
economic  forms  are  retained  when  moral 
conditions  which  befitted  them  have  en- 
tirely disappeared,  but  until  employers  of 
domestic  labor  become  conscious  of  their 
narrow  code  of  ethics,  and  make  a  distinct 
effort  to  break  through  the  status  of  mis- 
tress and  servant,  because  it  shocks  their 
moral  sense,  there  is  no  chance  of  even 
beginning  a  reform. 

126 


HOUSEHOLD  ADJUSTMENT 

A  fuller  social  and  domestic  life  among 
household  employees  would  be  steps  toward 
securing  their  entrance  into  the  larger 
industrial  organizations  by  which  the  needs 
of  a  community  are  most  successfully  admin- 
istered. Many  a  girl  who  complains  of 
loneliness,  and  who  relinquishes  her  situ- 
ation with  that  as  her  sole  excuse,  feebly 
tries  to  formulate  her  sense  of  restraint  and 
social  mal -adjustment.  She  sometimes  says 
that  she  "feels  so  unnatural  all  the  time." 
The  writer  has  known  the  voice  of  a  girl 
to  change  so  much  during  three  weeks  of 
"  service "  that  she  could  not  recognize  it 
when  the  girl  returned  to  her  home.  It 
alternated  between  the  high  falsetto  in 
which  a  shy  child  "speaks  a  piece"  and 
the  husky  gulp  with  which  the  globus  hys- 
tericus is  swallowed.  The  alertness  and 
bonhomie  of  the  voice  of  the  tenement- 
house  child  had  totally  disappeared.  When 
such  a  girl  leaves  her  employer,  her  reasons 
are  often  incoherent  and  totally  incompre- 
hensible to  that  good  lady,  who  naturally 
127 


DEMOCRACY  AND  SOCIAL  ETHICS 

concludes  that  she  wishes  to  get  away  from 
the  work  and  back  to  her  dances  and  giddy 
life,  content,  if  she  has  these,  to  stand  many 
hours  in  an  insanitary  factory.  The  charge 
of  the  employer  is  only  half  a  truth.  These 
dances  may  be  the  only  organized  form  of 
social  life  which  the  disheartened  employee 
is  able  to  mention,  but  the  girl  herself,  in 
her  discontent  and  her  moving  from  place 
to  place,  is  blindly  striving  to  respond  to  a 
larger  social  life.  Her  employer  thinks  that 
she  should  be  able  to  consider  only  the  in- 
terests and  conveniences  of  her  employer's 
family,  because  the  employer  herself  is  hold- 
ing to  a  family  outlook,  and  refuses  to  allow 
her  mind  to  take  in  the  larger  aspects  of  the 
situation. 

Although  this  household  industry  sur- 
vives in  the  midst  of  the  factory  system,  it 
must,  of  course,  constantly  compete  with 
it.  Women  with  little  children,  or  those 
with  invalids  depending  upon  them,  cannot 
enter  either  occupation,  and  they  are  prac- 
tically confined  to  the  sewing  trades;  but 
128 


HOUSEHOLD  ADJUSTMENT 

to  all  other  untrained  women  seeking  em- 
ployment a  choice  is  open  between  these 
two  forms  of  labor. 

There  are  few  women  so  dull  that  they 
cannot  paste  labels  on  a  box,  or  do  some 
form  of  factory  work ;  few  so  dull  that  some 
perplexed  housekeeper  will  not  receive  them, 
at  least  for  a  trial,  in  her  household.  House- 
hold labor,  then,  has  to  compete  with  factory 
labor,  and  women  seeking  employment,  more 
or  less  consciously  compare  these  two  forms 
of  labor  in  point  of  hours,  in  point  of  per- 
manency of  employment,  in  point  of  wages, 
and  in  point  of  the  advantage  they  afford 
for  family  and  social  life.  Three  points  are 
easily  disposed  of.  First,  in  regard  to  hours, 
there  is  no  doubt  that  the  factory  has  the 
advantage.  The  average  factory  hours  are 
from  seven  in  the  morning  to  six  in  the 
evening,  with  the  chance  of  working  over- 
time in  busy  seasons.  This  leaves  most  of 
the  evenings  and  Sundays  entirely  free.  The 
average  hours  of  household  labor  are  from 
six  in  the  morning  until  eight  at  night,  with 
K  129 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

little  difference  in  seasons.  There  is  one 
afternoon  a  week,  with  an  occasional  even- 
ing, but  Sunday  is  seldom  wholly  free. 
Even  these  evenings  and  afternoons  take 
the  form  of  a  concession  from  the  employer. 
They  are  called  "  evenings  out,"  as  if  the 
time  really  belonged  to  her,  but  that  she 
was  graciously  permitting  her  employee  to 
use  it.  This  attitude,  of  course,  is  in  marked 
contrast  to  that  maintained  by  the  factory 
operative,  who,  when  she  works  evenings 
is  paid  for  "  over-time." 

Second,  in  regard  to  permanency  of  posi- 
tion, the  advantage  is  found  clearly  on  the 
side  of  the  household  employee,  if  she  proves 
in  any  measure  satisfactory  to  her  employer, 
for  she  encounters  much  less  competition. 

Third,  in  point  of  wages,  the  household 
is  again  fairly  ahead,  if  we  consider  not  the 
money  received,  but  the  opportunity  offered 
for  saving  money.  This  is  greater  among 
household  employees,  because  they  do  not 
pay  board,  the  clothing  required  is  simpler, 
and  the  temptation  to  spend  money  in 
130 


HOUSEHOLD  ADJUSTMENT 

recreation  is  less  frequent.  The  minimum 
wages  paid  an  adult  in  household  labor 
may  be  fairly  put  at  two  dollars  and  a  half  a 
week;  the  maximum  at  six  dollars,  this  ex- 
cluding the  comparatively  rare  opportunities 
for  women  to  cook  at  forty  dollars  a  month, 
and  the  housekeeper's  position  at  fifty  dollars 
a  month. 

The  factory  wages,  viewed  from  the  savings- 
bank  point  of  view,  may  be  smaller  in  the  aver- 
age, but  this  is  doubtless  counterbalanced  in 
the  minds  of  the  employees  by  the  greater 
chance  which  the  factory  offers  for  increased 
wages.  A  girl  over  sixteen  seldom  works 
in  a  factory  for  less  than  four  dollars  a 
week,  and  always  cherishes  the  hope  of  at 
last  being  a  forewoman  with  a  permanent 
salary  of  from  fifteen  to  twenty-five  dollars  a 
week.  Whether  she  attains  this  or  not,  she 
runs  a  fair  chance  of  earning  ten  dollars  a 
week  as  a  skilled  worker.  A  girl  finds  it 
easier  to  be  content  with  three  dollars/  a 
week,  when  she  pays  for  board,  in  a  scale  of 
wages  rising  toward  ten  dollars,  than  to  be 
131 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

content  with  four  dollars  a  week  and  pay  no 
board,  in  a  scale  of  wages  rising  toward  six 
dollars;  and  the  girl  well  knows  that  there 
are  scores  of  forewomen  at  sixty  dollars  a 
month  for  one  forty-dollar  cook  or  fifty-dollar 
housekeeper.  In  many  cases  this  position  is 
well  taken  economically,  for,  although  the 
opportunity  for  saving  may  be  better  for  the 
employees  in  the  household  than  in  the  fac- 
tory, her  family  saves  more  when  she  works 
in  a  factory  and  lives  with  them.  The  rent  is 
no  more  when  she  is  at  home.  The  two 
dollars  and  a  half  a  week  which  she  pays  into 
the  family  fund  more  than  covers  the  cost  of 
her  actual  food,  and  at  night  she  can  often 
contribute  toward  the  family  labor  by  help- 
ing her  mother  wash  and  sew. 

The  fourth  point  has  already  been  consid- 
ered, and  if  the  premise  in  regard  to  the  isola- 
tion of  the  household  employee  is  well  taken, 
and  if  the  position  can  be  sustained  that  this 
isolation  proves  the  determining  factor  in  the 
situation,  then  certainly  an  effort  should  be 
made  to  remedy  this,  at  least  in  its  domestic 
132 


HOUSEHOLD   ADJUSTMENT 

and  social  aspects.  To  allow  household  em- 
ployees to  live  with  their  own  families  and 
among  their  own  friends,  as  factory  employees 
now  do,  would  be  to  relegate  more  production 
to  industrial  centres  administered  on  the  fac- 
tory system,  and  to  secure  shorter  hours  for 
that  which  remains  to  be  done  in  the  house- 
hold. 

In  those  cases  in  which  the  household 
employees  have  no  family  ties,  doubtless  a 
remedy  against  social  isolation  would  be  the 
formation  of  residence  clubs,  at  least  in  the 
suburbs,  where  the  isolation  is  most  keenly 
felt.  Indeed,  the  beginnings  of  these  clubs 
are  already  seen  in  the  servants'  quarters 
at  the  summer  hotels.  In  these  residence 
clubs,  the  household  employee  could  have  the 
independent  life  which  only  one's  own  abid- 
ing place  can  afford.  This,  of  course,  pre- 
supposes a  higher  grade  of  ability  than 
household  employees  at  present  possess;  on 
the  other  hand,  it  is  only  by  offering  such 
possibilities  that  the  higher  grades  of  intelli- 
gence can  be  secured  for  household  employ- 

133 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

ment.  As  the  plan  of  separate  clubs  for 
household  employees  will  probably  come 
first  in  the  suburbs,  where  the  difficulty  of 
securing  and  holding  "  servants  "  under  the 
present  system  is  most  keenly  felt,  so  the 
plan  of  buying  cooked  food  from  an  outside 
kitchen,  and  of  having  more  and  more  of  the 
household  product  relegated  to  the  factory, 
will  probably  come  from  the  comparatively 
poor  people  in  the  city,  who  feel  most  keenly 
the  pressure  of  the  present  system.  They 
already  consume  a  much  larger  proportion 
of  canned  goods  and  bakers'  wares  and 
"  prepared  meats  "  than  the  more  prosperous 
people  do,  because  they  cannot  command 
the  skill  nor  the  time  for  the  more  tedious 
preparation  of  the  raw  material.  The  writer 
has  seen  a  tenement-house  mother  pass  by 
a  basket  of  green  peas  at  the  door  of  a  local 
grocery  store,  to  purchase  a  tin  of  canned  peas, 
because  they  could  be  easily  prepared  for  sup- 
per and  "  the  children  liked  the  tinny  taste." 
It  is  comparatively  easy  for  an  employer 
to  manage  her  household  industry  with  a 
134 


HOUSEHOLD  ADJUSTMENT 

cook,  a  laundress,  a  waitress.  The  difficul- 
ties really  begin  when  the  family  income 
is  so  small  that  but  one  person  can  be  em- 
ployed in  the  household  for  all  these  varied 
functions,  and  the  difficulties  increase  and 
grow  almost  insurmountable  as  they  fall 
altogether  upon  the  mother  of  the  family, 
who  is  living  in  a  flat,  or,  worse  still,  in  a 
tenement  house,  where  one  stove  and  one  set 
of  utensils  must  be  put  to  all  sorts  of  uses,  fit 
or  unfit,  making  the  living  room  of  the  family 
a  horror  in  summer,  and  perfectly  insupport- 
able on  rainy  washing-days  in  winter.  Such 
a  woman,  rather  than  the  prosperous  house- 
keeper, uses  factory  products,  and  thus  no 
high  standard  of  quality  is  established. 

The  problem  of  domestic  service,  which 
has  long  been  discussed  in  the  United 
States  and  England,  is  now  coming  to 
prominence  in  France.  As  a  well-known 
economist  has  recently  pointed  out,  the  large 
defection  in  the  ranks  of  domestics  is  there 
regarded  as  a  sign  of  revolt  against  an 
"  unconscious  slavery,"  while  English  and 
135 


DEMOCRACY  AND  SOCIAL  ETHICS 

American  writers  appeal  to  the  statistics 
which  point  to  the  absorption  of  an  enor- 
mous number  of  the  class  from  which  ser- 
vants, were  formerly  recruited  into  factory- 
employments,  and  urge,  as  the  natural  solu- 
tion, that  more  of  the  products  used  in 
households  be  manufactured  in  factories, 
and  that  personal  service,  at  least  for 
healthy  adults,  be  eliminated  altogether. 
Both  of  these  lines  of  discussion  certainly 
indicate  that  domestic  service  is  yielding 
to  the  influence  of  a  democratic  move- 
ment, and  is  emerging  from  the  narrower 
code  of  family  ethics  into  the  larger  code 
governing  social  relations.  It  still  remains 
to  express  the  ethical  advance  through 
changed  economic  conditions  by  which  the 
actual  needs  of  the  family  may  be  supplied 
not  only  more  effectively  but  more  in  line 
with  associated  effort.  To  fail  to  apprehend 
the  tendency  of  one's  age,  and  to  fail  to  adapt 
the  conditions  of  an  industry  to  it,  is  to  leave 
that  industry  ill-adjusted  and  belated  on  the 
economic  side,  and  out  of  line  ethically. 

I -.6 


CHAPTER   V 

Industrial  Amelioration 

There  is  no  doubt  that  the  great  diffi- 
culty we  experience  in  reducing  to  action 
our  imperfect  code  of  social  ethics  arises 
from  the  fact  that  we  have  not  yet  learned 
to  act  together,  and  find  it  far  from  easy  even 
to  fuse  our  principles  and  aims  into  a  satis- 
factory statement.  We  have  all  been  at 
times  entertained  by  the  futile  efforts  of 
half  a  dozen  highly  individualized  people 
gathered  together  as  a  committee.  Their 
aimless  attempts  to  find  a  common  method 
of  action  have  recalled  the  wavering  mo- 
tion of  a  baby's  arm  before  he  has  learned 
to  coordinate  his  muscles. 

If,  as  is  many  times  stated,  we  are  pass- 
ing from  an  age  of  individualism  to  one  of 
association,  there  is  no  doubt   that  for  de- 

137 


DEMOCRACY  AND  SOCIAL  ETHICS 

cisive  and  effective  action  the  individual 
still  has  the  best  of  it.  He  will  secure  effi- 
cient results  while  committees  are  still  de- 
liberating upon  the  best  method  of  making 
a  beginning.  And  yet,  if  the  need  of  the 
times  demand  associated  effort,  it  may  easily 
be  true  that  the  action  which  appears  inef- 
fective, and  yet  is  carried  out  upon  the  more 
highly  developed  line  of  associated  effort, 
may  represent  a  finer  social  quality  and 
have  a  greater  social  value  than  the  more 
effective  individual  action.  It  is  possible 
that  an  individual  may  be  successful,  largely 
because  he  conserves  all  his  powers  for  in- 
dividual achievement  and  does  not  put  any 
of  his  energy  into  the  training  which  will 
give  him  the  ability  to  act  with  others. 
The  individual  acts  promptly,  and  we  are 
dazzled  by  his  success  while  only  dimly 
conscious  of  the  inadequacy  of  his  code. 
Nowhere  is  this  illustrated  more  clearly 
than  in  industrial  relations,  as  existing  be- 
tween the  owner  of  a  large  factory  and  his 
employees. 

138 


INDUSTRIAL  AMELIORATION 

A  growing  conflict  may  be  detected  be- 
tween the  democratic  ideal,  which  urges 
the  workmen  to  demand  representation  in 
the  administration  of  industry,  and  the 
accepted  position,  that  the  man  who  owns 
the  capital  and  takes  the  risks  has  the 
exclusive  right  of  management.  It  is  in 
reality  a  clash  between  individual  or  aris- 
tocratic management,  and  corporate  or 
democratic  management.  A  large  and 
highly  developed  factory  presents  a  sharp 
contrast  between  its  sociahzed  form  and 
individualistic  ends. 

It  is  possible  to  illustrate  this  difference 
by  a  series  of  events  which  occurred  in 
Chicago  during  the  summer  of  1894. 
These  events  epitomized  and  exaggerated, 
but  at  the  same  time  challenged,  the  code 
of  ethics  which  regulates  much  of  our 
daily  conduct,  and  clearly  showed  that  so- 
called  social  relations  are  often  resting 
upon  the  will  of  an  individual,  and  are  in 
reality  regulated  by  a  code  of  individual 
ethics. 

139 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

As  this  situation  illustrates  a  point  of 
great  difficulty  to  which  we  have  arrived  in 
our  development  of  social  ethics,  it  may  be 
justifiable  to  discuss  it  at  some  length.  Let 
us  recall  the  facts,  not  as  they  have  been 
investigated  and  printed,  but  as  they  remain 
in  our  memories. 

A  large  manufacturing  company  had 
provided  commodious  workshops,  and,  at 
the  instigation  of  its  president,  had  built 
a  model  town  for  the  use  of  its  employees. 
After  a  series  of  years  it  was  deemed  nec- 
essary, during  a  financial  depression,  to 
reduce  the  wages  of  these  employees  by 
giving  each  workman  less  than  full-time 
work  "in  order  to  keep  the  shops  open." 
This  reduction  was  not  accepted  by  the 
men,  who  had  become  discontented  with 
the  factory  management  and  the  town 
regulations,  and  a  strike  ensued,  followed 
by  a  complete  shut-down  of  the  works. 
Although  these  shops  were  non-union 
shops,  the  strikers  were  hastily  organized 
and   appealed    for    help    to    the    American 

140 


INDUSTRIAL  AMELIORATION 

Railway  Union,  which  at  that  moment 
was  holding  its  biennial  meeting  in  Chicago. 
After  some  days'  discussion  and  some 
futile  attempts  at  arbitration,  a  sympathetic 
strike  was  declared,  which  gradually  in- 
volved railway  men  in  all  parts  of  the 
country,  and  orderly  transportation  was 
brought  to  a  complete  standstill.  In  the 
excitement  which  followed,  cars  were  burned 
and  tracks  torn  up.  The  police  of  Chicago 
did  not  cope  with  the  disorder,  and  the 
railway  companies,  apparently  distrusting 
the  Governor  of  the  State,  and  in  order 
to  protect  the  United  States  mails,  called 
upon  the  President  of  the  United  States 
for  the  federal  troops,  the  federal  courts 
further  enjoined  all  persons  against  any 
form  of  interference  with  the  property  or 
operation  of  the  railroads,  and  the  situa- 
tion gradually  assumed  the  proportions  of 
internecine  warfare.  During  all  of  these 
events  the  president  of  the  manufacturing 
company  first  involved,  steadfastly  refused 
to  have  the  situation  submitted  to  arbitra- 

14X 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

tion,  and  this  attitude  naturally  provoked 
much  discussion.  The  discussion  was 
broadly  divided  between  those  who  held 
that  the  long  kindness  of  the  president 
of  the  company  had  been  most  ungrate- 
fully received,  and  those  who  maintained 
that  the  situation  was  the  inevitable  out- 
come of  the  social  consciousness  develop- 
ing among  working  people.  The  first 
defended  the  president  of  the  company  in 
his  persistent  refusal  to  arbitrate,  main- 
taining that  arbitration  was  impossible  after 
the  matter  had  been  taken  up  by  other 
than  his  own  employees,  and  they  declared 
that  a  man  must  be  allowed  to  run  his  own 
business.  They  considered  the  firm  stand 
of  the  president  a  service  to  the  manu- 
facturing interests  of  the  entire  country. 
The  others  claimed  that  a  large  manu- 
facturing concern  has  ceased  to  be  a  pri- 
vate matter;  that  not  only  a  number  of 
workmen  and  stockholders  are  concerned 
in  its  management,  but  that  the  interests 
of    the    public    are    so    involved    that    the 

142 


INDUSTRIAL  AMELIORATION 

officers  of  the  company  are  in  a  real  sense 
administering  a  public  trust. 

This  prolonged  strike  clearly  puts  in  a 
concrete  form  the  ethics  of  an  individual, 
in  this  case  a  benevolent  employer,  and 
the  ethics  of  a  mass  of  men,  his  employees, 
claiming  what  they  believed  to  be  their 
moral  rights. 

These  events  illustrate  the  difficulty  of 
managing  an  industry  which  has  become 
organized  into  a  vast  social  operation,  not 
with  the  cooperation  of  the  workman  thus 
socialized,  but  solely  by  the  dictation  of 
the  individual  owning  the  capital.  There 
is  a  sharp  divergence  between  the  social 
form  and  the  individual  aim,  which  becomes 
greater  as  the  employees  are  more  highly 
socialized  and  dependent.  The  president  of 
the  company  under  discussion  went  further 
than  the  usual  employer  does.  He  social- 
ized not  only  the  factory,  but  the  form  in 
which  his  workmen  were  living.  He  built, 
and  in  a  great  measure  regulated,  an  entire 
town,  without  calling  upon  the  workmen 
143 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

either  for  self-expression  or  self-government. 
He  honestly  believed  that  he  knew  better 
than  they  what  was  for  their  good,  as  he 
certainly  knew  better  than  they  how  to  con- 
duct his  business.  As  his  factory  developed 
and  increased,  making  money  each  year 
under  his  direction,  he  naturally  expected 
the  town  to  prosper  in  the  same   way. 

He  did  not  realize  that  the  men  sub- 
mitted to  the  undemocratic  conditions  of 
the  factory  organization  because  the  eco- 
nomic pressure  in  our  industrial  affairs  is 
so  great  that  they  could  not  do  otherwise. 
Under  this  pressure  they  could  be  success- 
fully discouraged  from  organization,  and 
systematically  treated  on  the  individual 
basis. 

Social  life,  however,  in  spite  of  class  distinc- 
tions, is  much  freer  than  industrial  life,  and 
the  men  resented  the  extension  of  industrial 
control  to  domestic  and  social  arrangements. 
They  felt  the  lack  of  democracy  in  the  as- 
sumption that  they  should  be  taken  care  of 
m  these  matters,  in  which  even  the  humblest 

144 


INDUSTRIAL  AMELIORATION 

workman  has  won  his  independence.  The 
basic  difficulty  lay  in  the  fact  that  an  in- 
dividual was  directing  the  social  affairs  of 
many  men  without  any  consistent  effort  to 
find  out  their  desires,  and  without  any  organ- 
ization through  which  to  give  them  social 
expression.  The  president  of  the  company 
was,  moreover,  so  confident  of  the  righteous- 
ness of  his  aim  that  he  had  come  to  test 
the  righteousness  of  the  process  by  his  own 
feelings  and  not  by  those  of  the  men.  He 
doubtless  built  the  town  from  a  sincere 
desire  to  give  his  employees  the  best  sur- 
roundings. As  it  developed,  he  gradually 
took  toward  it  the  artist  attitude  toward 
his  own  creation,  which  has  no  thought 
for  the  creation  itself  but  is  absorbed  In 
the  idea  it  stands  for,  and  he  ceased  to 
measure  the  usefulness  of  the  town  by  the 
standard  of  the  men's  needs.  This  process 
slowly  darkened  his  glints  of  memory, 
which  might  have  connected  his  experi- 
ence with  that  of  his  men.  It  is  possible 
to  cultivate  the  impulses  of  the  benefactor 
L  145 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

until  the  power  of  attaining  a  simple  human 
relationship  with  the  beneficiaries,  that  of 
frank  equality  with  them,  is  gone,  and  there 
is  left  no  mutual  interest  in  a  common 
cause.  To  perform  too  many  good  deeds 
may  be  to  lose  the  power  of  recognizing  good 
in  others ;  to  be  too  absorbed  in  carrying 
out  a  personal  plan  of  improvement  may 
be  to  fail  to  catch  the  great  moral  lesson 
which  our  times  offer. 

The  president  of  this  company  fostered 
his  employees  for  many  years ;  he  gave 
them  sanitary  houses  and  beautiful  parks; 
but  in  their  extreme  need,  when  they  were 
struggling  with  the  most  difficult  situation 
which  the  times  could  present  to  them,  he 
lost  his  touch  and  had  nothing  wherewith 
to  help  them.  The  employer's  conception 
of  goodness  for  his  men  had  been  cleanli- 
ness, decency  of  living,  and,  above  all, 
thrift  and  temperance.  Means  had  been 
provided  for  all  this,  and  opportunities  had 
also  been  given  for  recreation  and  improve- 
ment.     But  this  employer  suddenly  found 

146 


INDUSTRIAL  AMELIORATION 

his  town  in  the  sweep  of  a  world-wide  moral 
impulse.  A  movement  had  been  going  on 
about  him  and  among  his  working  men,  of 
which  he  had  been  unconscious,  or  concern- 
ing which  he  had  heard  only  by  rumor. 

Outside  the  ken  of  philanthropists  the 
proletariat  had  learned  to  say  in  many  lan- 
guages, that  "  the  injury  of  one  is  the 
concern  of  all."  Their  watchwords  were 
brotherhood,  sacrifice,  the  subordination  of 
individual  and  trade  interests,  to  the  good 
of  the  working  classes,  and  they  were 
moved  by  a  determination  to  free  that  class 
from  the  untoward  conditions  under  which 
they  were  laboring. 

Compared  to  these  watchwords,  the  old 
ones  which  this  philanthropic  employer  had 
given  his  town  were  negative  and  inade- 
quate. He  had  believed  strongly  in  tem- 
perance and  steadiness  of  individual  effort, 
but  had  failed  to  apprehend  the  greater 
movement  of  combined  abstinence  and 
concerted  action.  With  all  his  fostering, 
the   president   had   not   attained   to   a  con- 

147 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

ception  of  social  morality  for  his  men  and 
had  imagined  that  virtue  for  them  largely 
meant  absence  of  vice. 

When  the  labor  movement  finally  stirred 
his  town,  or,  to  speak  more  fairly,  when, 
in  their  distress  and  perplexity,  his  own 
employees  appealed  to  an  organized  mani- 
festation of  this  movement,  they  were  quite 
sure  that  simply  because  they  were  work- 
men in  distress  they  would  not  be  deserted 
by  it.  This  loyalty  on  the  part  of  a  widely 
ramified  and  well-organized  union  toward 
the  workmen  in  a  "  non-union  shop,"  who 
had  contributed  nothing  to  its  cause,  was 
certainly  a  manifestation  of  moral  power. 

In  none  of  his  utterances  or  correspond- 
ence did  the  president  for  an  instant  recog- 
nize this  touch  of  nobility,  although  one 
would  imagine  that  he  would  gladly  point 
out  this  bit  of  virtue,  in  what  he  must 
have  considered  the  moral  ruin  about 
him.  He  stood  throughout  for  the  indi- 
vidual virtues,  those  which  had  distinguished 
the   model    workmen   of    his    youth ;    those 

148 


INDUSTRIAL  AMELIORATION 

which  had  enabled  him  and  so  many  of  his 
contemporaries  to  rise  in  life,  when  "  rising 
in  life  "  was  urged  upon  every  promising  boy 
as  the  goal  of  his  efforts. 

Of  the  code  of  social  ethics  he  had  caught 
absolutely  nothing.  The  morals  he  had 
advocated  in  selecting  and  training  his  men 
did  not  fail  them  in  the  hour  of  confusion. 
They  were  self-controlled,  and  they  them- 
selves destroyed  no  property.  They  were 
sober  and  exhibited  no  drunkenness,  even 
although  obliged  to  hold  their  meetings  in 
the  saloon  hall  of  a  neighboring  town. 
They  repaid  their  employer  in  kind,  but 
he  had  given  them  no  rule  for  the  life  of 
association  into  which  they  were  plunged. 

The  president  of  the  company  desired  that 
his  employees  should  possess  the  individual 
and  family  virtues,  but  did  nothing  to 
cherish  in  them  the  social  virtues  which 
express  themselves  in  associated  effort. 

Day  after  day,  during  that  horrible  time 
of  suspense,  when  the  wires  constantly 
reported  the  same  message,  "  the  President 

149 


DEMOCRACY  AND  SOCIAL  ETHICS 

of  the  Company  holds  that  there  is  nothing 
to  arbitrate,"  one  was  forced  to  feel  that  the 
ideal  of  one-man  rule  was  being  sustained 
in  its  baldest  form.  A  demand  from  many 
parts  of  the  country  and  from  many  people 
was  being  made  for  social  adjustment, 
against  which  the  commercial  training  and 
the  individualistic  point  of  view  held  its  own 
successfully. 

The  majority  of  the  stockholders,  not 
only  of  this  company  but  of  similar  com- 
panies, and  many  other  citizens,  who  had 
had  the  same  commercial  experience,  shared 
and  sustained  this  position.  It  was  quite 
impossible  for  them  to  catch  the  other  point 
of  view.  They  not  only  felt  themselves 
right  from  the  commercial  standpoint,  but 
had  gradually  accustomed  themselves  also 
to  the  philanthropic  standpoint,  until  they 
had  come  to  consider  their  motives  beyond 
reproach.  Habit  held  them  persistent  in 
this  view  of  the  case  through  all  changing 
conditions. 

A  wise  man  has  said  that  "  the  consent 
150 


INDUSTRIAL  AMELIORATION 

of  men  and  your  own  conscience  are  two 
wings  given  you  whereby  you  may  rise  to 
God."  It  is  so  easy  for  the  good  and  power- 
ful to  think  that  they  can  rise  by  following 
the  dictates  of  conscience,  by  pursuing  their 
own  ideals,  that  they  are  prone  to  leave  those 
ideals  unconnected  with  the  consent  of  their 
fellow-men.  The  president  of  the  company 
thought  out  within  his  own  mind  a  beautiful 
town.  He  had  power  with  which  to  build 
this  town,  but  he  did  not  appeal  to  nor  obtain 
the  consent  of  the  men  who  were  living  in  it. 
The  most  unambitious  reform,  recognizing 
the  necessity  for  this  consent,  makes  for  slow 
but  sane  and  strenuous  progress,  while  the 
most  ambitious  of  social  plans  and  experi- 
ments, ignoring  this,  is  prone  to  failure. 

The  man  who  insists  upon  consent,  who 
moves  with  the  people,  is  bound  to  consult 
the  "  feasible  right "  as  well  as  the  absolute 
right.  He  is  often  obliged  to  attain  only 
Mr.  Lincoln's  '*  best  possible,"  and  then  has 
the  sickening  sense  of  compromise  with  his 
best  convictions.      He   has  to  move   along 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

with  those  whom  he  leads  toward  a  goal 
that  neither  he  nor  they  see  very  clearly  till 
they  come  to  it.  He  has  to  discover  what 
people  really  want,  and  then  "provide  the 
channels  in  which  the  growing  moral  force 
of  their  lives  shall  flow."  What  he  does 
attain,  however,  is  not  the  result  of  his 
individual  striving,  as  a  solitary  mountain- 
climber  beyond  that  of  the  valley  multitude 
but  it  is  sustained  and  upheld  by  the 
sentiments  and  aspirations  of  many  others. 
Progress  has  been  slower  perpendicularly, 
but  incomparably  greater  because  lateral. 
He  has  not  taught  his  contemporaries  to 
climb  mountains,  but  he  has  persuaded  the 
villagers  to  move  up  a  few  feet  higher ; 
added  to  this,  he  has  made  secure  his  prog- 
ress. A  few  months  after  the  death  of  the 
promoter  of  this  model  town,  a  court  deci- 
sion made  it  obligatory  upon  the  company 
to  divest  itself  of  the  management  of  the 
town  as  involving  a  function  beyond  its 
corporate  powers.  The  parks,  flowers,  and 
fountains  of  this  far-famed  industrial  centre 

152 


INDUSTRIAL  AMELIORATION 

were  dismantled,  with  scarcely  a  protest 
from  the  inhabitants  themselves. 

The  man  who  disassociates  his  ambition, 
however  disinterested,  from  the  cooperation 
of  his  fellows,  always  takes  this  risk  of  ulti- 
mate failure.  He  does  not  take  advantage 
of  the  great  conserver  and  guarantee  of  his 
own  permanent  success  which  associated 
efforts  afford.  Genuine  experiments  tow- 
ard higher  social  conditions  must  have  a 
more  democratic  faith  and  practice  than 
those  which  underlie  private  venture.  Pub- 
lic parks  and  improvements,  intended  for 
the  common  use,  are  after  all  only  safe  in 
the  hands  of  the  public  itself;  and  associ- 
ated effort  toward  social  progress,  although 
much  more  awkward  and  stumbling  than 
that  same  effort  managed  by  a  capable 
individual,  does  yet  enlist  deeper  forces 
and  evoke  higher  social  capacities. 

The  successful  business  man  who  is  also 
the  philanthropist  is  in  more  than  the  usual 
danger  of  getting  widely  separated  from 
his  employees.     The  men  already  have  the 

153 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

American  veneration  for  wealth  and  suc- 
cessful business  capacity,  and,  added  to 
this,  they  are  dazzled  by  his  good  works. 
The  workmen  have  the  same  kindly  im- 
pulses as  he,  but  while  they  organize  their 
charity  into  mutual  benefit  associations  and 
distribute  their  money  in  small  amounts  in 
relief  for  the  widows  and  insurance  for  the 
injured,  the  employer  may  build  model 
towns,  erect  college  buildings,  which  are 
tangible  and  enduring,  and  thereby  display 
his  goodness  in  concentrated  form. 

By  the  very  exigencies  of  business  de- 
mands, the  employer  is  too  often  cut  ofif 
from  the  social  ethics  developing  in  regard 
to  our  larger  social  relationships,  and  from 
the  great  moral  life  springing  from  our 
common  experiences.  This  is  sure  to 
happen  when  he  is  good  "  to "  people 
rather  than  "  with "  them,  when  he  allows 
himself  to  decide  what  is  best  for  them  in- 
stead of  consulting  them.  He  thus  misses 
the  rectifying  influence  of  that  fellowship 
which  is  so  big  that  it  leaves  no  room  for 
154 


INDUSTRIAL  AMELIORATION 

sensitiveness  or  gratitude.  Without  this 
fellowship  we  may  never  know  how  great 
the  divergence  between  ourselves  and  others 
may  become,  nor  how  cruel  the  misunder- 
standings. 

During  a  recent  strike  of  the  employees  of 
a  large  factory  in  Ohio,  the  president  of  the 
company  expressed  himself  as  bitterly  disap- 
pointed by  the  results  of  his  many  kindnesses, 
and  evidently  considered  the  employees 
utterly  unappreciative.  His  state  of  mind 
was  the  result  of  the  fallacy  of  ministering  to 
social  needs  from  an  individual  impulse  and 
expecting  a  socialized  return  of  gratitude 
and  loyalty.  If  the  lunch-room  was  neces- 
sary, it  was  a  necessity  in  order  that  the  em- 
ployees might  have  better  food,  and,  when 
they  had  received  the  better  food,  the  legiti- 
mate aim  of  the  lunch-room  was  met.  If 
baths  were  desirable,  and  the  fifteen  minutes 
of  calisthenic  exercise  given  the  women  in 
the  middle  of  each  half  day  brought  a  needed 
rest  and  change  to  their  muscles,  then  the 
increased  cleanliness  and  the  increased  bodily 
155 


DEMOCRACY  AND  SOCIAL  ETHICS 

comfort  of  so  many  people  should  of  them- 
selves have  justified  the  experiment. 

To  demand,  as  a  further  result,  that  there 
should  be  no  strikes  in  the  factory,  no  revolt 
against  the  will  of  the  employer  because  the 
employees  v^ere  filled  with  loyalty  as  the 
result  of  the  kindness,  was  of  course  to  take 
the  experiment  from  an  individual  basis  to 
a  social  one. 

Large  mining  companies  and  manufactur- 
ing concerns  are  constantly  appealing  to 
their  stockholders  for  funds,  or  for  permis- 
sion to  take  a  percentage  of  the  profits,  in 
order  that  the  money  may  be  used  for  educa- 
tional and  social  schemes  designed  for  the 
benefit  of  the  employees.  The  promoters 
of  these  schemes  use  as  an  argument  and  as 
an  appeal,  that  better  relations  will  be  thus 
established,  that  strikes  will  be  prevented,  and 
that  in  the  end  the  money  returned  to  the 
stockholders  will  be  increased.  However 
praiseworthy  this  appeal  may  be  in  motive,  it 
involves  a  distinct  confusion  of  issues,  and 
in  theory  deserves   the   failure   it   so   often 

156 


INDUSTRIAL  AMELIORATION 

meets  with  in  practice.  In  the  clash  which 
follows  a  strike,  the  employees  are  accused 
of  an  ingratitude,  when  there  was  no  legiti- 
mate reason  to  expect  gratitude ;  and  useless 
bitterness,  which  has  really  a  factitious  basis, 
may  be  developed  on  both  sides. 

Indeed,  unless  the  relation  becomes  a  demo- 
cratic one,  the  chances  of  misunderstanding 
are  increased,  when  to  the  relation  of  em- 
ployer and  employees  is  added  the  relation  of 
benefactor  to  beneficiaries,  in  so  far  as  there 
is  still  another  opportunity  for  acting  upon 
the  individual  code  of  ethics. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  these  efforts  are  to 
be  commended,  not  only  from  the  standpoint 
of  their  social  value  but  because  they  have  a 
marked  industrial  significance.  Failing,  as 
they  do,  however,  to  touch  the  question  of 
wages  and  hours,  which  are  almost  invariably 
the  points  of  trades-union  effort,  the  employ- 
ers confuse  the  mind  of  the  public  when 
they  urge  the  amelioration  of  conditions  and 
the  kindly  relation  existing  between  them 
and  their  men  as  a  reason  for  the  discontinu- 
157 


DEMOCRACY  AND  SOCIAL  ETHICS 

ance  of  strikes  and  other  trades-union  tactics. 
The  men  have  individually  accepted  the 
kindness  of  the  employers  as  it  was  indi- 
vidually offered,  but  quite  as  the  latter  urges 
his  inability  to  increase  wages  unless  he 
has  the  cooperation  of  his  competitors,  so 
the  men  state  that  they  are  bound  to  the 
trades-union  struggle  for  an  increase  in 
wages  because  it  can  only  be  undertaken  by 
combinations  of  labor. 

Even  the  much  more  democratic  effort  to 
divide  a  proportion  of  the  profits  at  the  end 
of  the  year  among  the  employees,  upon  the 
basis  of  their  wages  and  efficiency,  is  also 
exposed  to  a  weakness,  from  the  fact  that  the 
employing  side  has  the  power  of  determin- 
ing to  whom  the  benefit  shall  accrue. 

Both  individual  acts  of  self-defence  on  the 
part  X)i  the  wage  earner  and  individual  acts 
of  benevolence  on  the  part  of  the  employer 
are  most  useful  as  they  establish  standards 
to  which  the  average  worker  and  employer 
may  in  time  be  legally  compelled  to  conform. 
Progress  must  always  come  through  the  in- 
158 


INDUSTRIAL  AMELIORATION 

dividual  who  varies  from  the  type  and  has 
sufficient  energy  to  express  this  variation. 
He  first  holds  a  higher  conception  than  that 
held  by  the  mass  of  his  fellows  of  what  is 
righteous  under  given  conditions,  and  ex- 
presses this  conviction  in  conduct,  in  many 
instances  formulating  a  certain  scruple  which 
the  others  share,  but  have  not  yet  defined 
even  to  themselves.  Progress,  however,  is 
not  secure  until  the  mass  has  conformed  to 
this  new  righteousness.  This  is  equally  true 
in  regard  to  any  advance  made  in  the  stand- 
ard of  living  on  the  part  of  the  trades- 
unionists  or  in  the  improved  conditions  of 
industry  on  the  part  of  reforming  employers. 
The  mistake  lies,  not  in  overpraising  the 
advance  thus  inaugurated  by  individual  ini- 
tiative, but  in  regarding  the  achievement  as 
complete  in  a  social  sense  when  it  is  still 
in  the  realm  of  individual  action. 

No  sane  manufacturer  regards  his  factory 

as  the  centre  of  the  industrial  system.     He 

knows  very  well  that  the  cost  of  material, 

wages,  and  selling  prices  are  determined  by 

159 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

industrial  conditions  completely  beyond  his 
control.  Yet  the  same  man  may  quite 
calmly  regard  himself  and  his  own  private 
principles  as  merely  self-regarding,  and  ex- 
pect results  from  casual  philanthropy  which 
can  only  be  accomplished  through  those 
common  rules  of  life  and  labor  estab- 
lished by  the  community  for  the  common 
good. 

Outside  of  and  surrounding  these  smaller 
and  most  significant  efforts  are  the  larger 
and  irresistible  movements  operating  toward 
combination.  This  movement  must  tend  to 
decide  upon  social  matters  from  the  social 
standpoint.  Until  then  it  is  difficult  to  keep 
our  minds  free  from  a  confusion  of  issues. 
Such  a  confusion  occurs  when  the  gift  of  a 
large  sum  to  the  community  for  a  public 
and  philanthropic  purpose,  throws  a  certain 
glamour  over  all  the  earlier  acts  of  a  man, 
and  makes  it  difficult  for  the  community  to 
see  possible  wrongs  committed  against  it,  in 
the  accumulation  of  wealth  so  beneficently 
used.  It  is  possible  also  that  the  resolve  to 
i6o 


INDUSTRIAL  AMELIORATION 

be  thus  generous  unconsciously  influences 
the  man  himself  in  his  methods  of  accumu- 
lation. He  keeps  to  a  certain  individual 
rectitude,  meaning  to  make  an  individual 
restitution  by  the  old  paths  of  generosity 
and  kindness,  whereas  if  he  had  in  view 
social  restitution  on  the  newer  lines  of 
justice  and  opportunity,  he  would  through- 
out his  course  doubtless  be  watchful  of 
his  industrial  relationships  and  his  social 
virtues. 

The  danger  of  professionally  attaining  to 
the  power  of  the  righteous  man,  of  yielding 
to  the  ambition  "  for  doing  good  "  on  a  large 
scale,  compared  to  which  the  ambition  for 
politics,  learning,  or  wealth,  are  vulgar  and 
commonplace,  ramifies  through  our  modern 
life;  and  those  most  easily  beset  by  this 
temptation  are  precisely  the  men  best  situ- 
ated to  experiment  on  the  larger  social  lines, 
because  they  so  easily  dramatize  their  acts 
and  lead  public  opinion.  Very  often,  too, 
they  have  in  their  hands  the  preservation 
and   advancement  of  large  vested  interests, 

M  l6l 


DEMOCRACY  AND  SOCIAL  ETHICS 

and  often  see  clearly  and  truly  that  they 
are  better  able  to  administer  the  affairs  of 
the  community  than  the  community  itself: 
sometimes  they  see  that  if  they  do  not  ad- 
minister them  sharply  and  quickly,  as  only 
an  individual  can,  certain  interests  of  theirs 
dependent  upon  the  community  will  go  to 
ruin. 

The  model  employer  first  considered,  pro- 
vided a  large  sum  in  his  will  with  which 
to  build  and  equip  a  polytechnic  school, 
which  will  doubtless  be  of  great  public 
value.  This  again  shows  the  advantage  of 
individual  management,  in  the  spending  as 
well  as  in  the  accumulating  of  wealth,  but 
this  school  will  attain  its  highest  good,  in  so 
far  as  it  incites  the  ambition  to  provide  other 
schools  from  public  funds.  The  town  of 
Zurich  possesses  a  magnificent  polytechnic 
institute,  secured  by  the  vote  of  the  entire 
people  and  supported  from  public  taxes. 
Every  man  who  voted  for  it  is  interested  that 
his  child  should  enjoy  its  benefits,  and,  of 
course,  the  voluntary  attendance  must  be 
162 


INDUSTRIAL  AMELIORATION 

hrger  than  in  a  school  accepted  as  a  gift 
to  the  community. 

In  the  educational  efforts  of  model  em- 
ployers, as  in  other  attempts  toward  social 
amelioration,  one  man  with  the  best  of  inten- 
tions is  trying  to  do  what  the  entire  body 
of  employees  should  have  undertaken  to 
do  for  themselves.  The  result  of  his  efforts 
will  only  attain  its  highest  value  as  it  serves 
as  an  incentive  to  procure  other  results  by 
the  community  as  well  as  for  the  commu- 
nity. 

There  are  doubtless  many  things  which 
the  public  would  never  demand  unless  they 
were  first  supplied  by  individual  initiative, 
both  because  the  public  lacks  the  imagi- 
nation, and  also  the  power  of  formulating 
their  wants.  Thus  philanthropic  effort  sup- 
plies kindergartens,  until  they  become  so 
established  in  the  popular  affections  that 
they  are  incorporated  in  the  public  school 
system.  Churches  and  missions  establish 
reading  rooms,  until  at  last  the  public 
library  system  dots  the  city  with  branch 
163 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

reading  rooms  and  libraries.  For  this  will- 
ingness to  take  risks  for  the  sake  of  an 
ideal,  for  those  experiments  which  must  be 
undertaken  with  vigor  and  boldness  in  order 
to  secure  didactic  value  in  failure  as  well  as 
in  success,  society  must  depend  upon  the 
individual  possessed  with  money,  and  also 
distinguished  by  earnest  and  unselfish  pur- 
pose. Such  experiments  enable  the  nation 
to  use  the  Referendum  method  in  its  public 
affairs.  Each  social  experiment  is  thus 
tested  by  a  few  people,  given  wide  pub- 
licity, that  it  may  be  observed  and  discussed 
by  the  bulk  of  the  citizens  before  the  public 
prudently  makes  up  its  mind  whether  or  not 
it  is  wise  to  incorporate  it  into  the  functions 
of  government.  If  the  decision  is  in  its 
favor  and  it  is  so  incorporated,  it  can  then 
be  carried  on  with  confidence  and  enthu- 
siasm. 

But  experience  has  shown  that  we  can 
only  depend  upon  successful  men  for  a  cer- 
tain type  of  experiment  in  the  line  of  indus- 
trial  amelioration   and   social  advancement. 

164 


INDUSTRIAL  AMELIORATION 

The  list  of  those  who  found  churches,  edu- 
cational institutions,  libraries,  and  art  galler- 
ies, is  very  long,  as  is  again  the  list  of  those 
contributing  to  model  dwellings,  recreation 
halls,  and  athletic  fields.  At  the  present 
moment  factory  employers  are  doing  much 
to  promote  "  industrial  betterment "  in  the 
way  of  sanitary  surroundings,  opportunities 
for  bathing,  lunch  rooms  provided  with 
cheap  and  wholesome  food,  club  rooms,  and 
guild  halls.  But  there  is  a  line  of  social 
experiment  involving  social  righteousness  in 
its  most  advanced  form,  in  which  the  num- 
ber of  employers  and  the  "  favored  class " 
are  so  few  that  it  is  plain  society  cannot 
count  upon  them  for  continuous  and  valu- 
able help.  This  lack  is  in  the  line  of  factory 
legislation  and  that  sort  of  social  advance 
implied  in  shorter  hours  and  the  regulation 
of  wages ;  in  short,  all  that  organization  and 
activity  that  is  involved  in  such  a  mainten- 
ance and  increase  of  wages  as  would  prevent 
the  lowering  of  the  standard  of  life. 

A  large  body  of  people  feel  keenly  that 
165 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

the  present  industrial  system  is  in  a  state  of 
profound  disorder,  and  that  there  is  no  guar- 
antee that  the  pursuit  of  individual  ethics 
will  ever  right  it.  They  claim  that  relief 
can  only  come  through  deliberate  corporate 
effort  inspired  by  social  ideas  and  guided  by 
the  study  of  economic  laws,  and  that  the 
present  industrial  system  thwarts  our  ethi- 
cal demands,  not  only  for  social  righteous- 
ness but  for  social  order.  Because  they 
believe  that  each  advance  in  ethics  must 
be  made  fast  by  a  corresponding  advance 
in  politics  and  legal  enactment,  they  insist 
upon  the  right  of  state  regulation  and  con- 
trol. While  many  people  representing  all 
classes  in  a  community  would  assent  to 
this  as  to  a  general  proposition,  and  would 
even  admit  it  as  a  certain  moral  obligation, 
legislative  enactments  designed  to  control  in- 
dustrial conditions  have  largely  been  secured 
through  the  efforts  of  a  few  citizens,  mostly 
those  who  constantly  see  the  harsh  conditions 
of  labor  and  who  are  incited  to  activity  by 
their  sympathies  as  well  as  their  convictions. 
i66 


INDUSTRIAL  AMELIORATION 

This  may  be  illustrated  by  the  series  of 
legal  enactments  regulating  the  occupations 
in  which  children  may  be  allowed  to  work, 
also  the  laws  in  regard  to  the  hours  of  labor 
permitted  in  those  occupations,  and  the  mini- 
mum age  below  which  children  may  not  be 
employed.  The  first  child  labor  laws  were 
enacted  in  England  through  the  efforts  of 
those  members  of  parliament  whose  hearts 
were  wrung  by  the  condition  of  the  little 
parish  apprentices  bound  out  to  the  early 
textile  manufacturers  of  the  north ;  and 
through  the  long  years  required  to  build  up 
the  code  of  child  labor  legislation  which 
England  now  possesses,  knowledge  of  the 
conditions  has  always  preceded  effective  leg- 
islation. The  efforts  of  that  small  number 
in  every  community  who  believe  in  legisla- 
tive control  have  always  been  reenforced  by 
the  efforts  of  trades-unionists  rather  than  by 
the  efforts  of  employers.  Partly  because  the 
employment  of  workingmen  in  the  factories 
brings  them  in  contact  with  the  children 
who  tend  to  lower  wages  and  demoralize 
167 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

their  trades,  and  partly  because  working- 
men  have  no  money  nor  time  to  spend  in 
alleviating  philanthropy,  and  must  perforce 
seize  upon  agitation  and  legal  enactment  as 
the  only  channel  of  redress  which  is  open 
to  them. 

We  may  illustrate  by  imagining  a  row 
of  people  seated  in  a  moving  street-car, 
into  which  darts  a  boy  of  eight,  calling  out 
the  details  of  the  last  murder,  in  the  hope 
of  selling  an  evening  newspaper.  A  com- 
fortable looking  man  buys  a  paper  from 
him  with  no  sense  of  moral  shock;  he  may 
even  be  a  trifle  complacent  that  he  has 
helped  along  the  little  fellow,  who  is  making 
his  way  in  the  world.  The  philanthropic 
lady  sitting  next  to  him  may  perhaps  reflect 
that  it  is  a  pity  that  such  a  bright  boy  is 
not  in  school.  She  may  make  up  her  mind 
in  a  moment  of  compunction  to  redouble 
her  efforts  for  various  newsboys'  schools 
and  homes,  that  this  poor  child  may  have 
better  teaching,  and  perhaps  a  chance  at 
manual  training.  She  probably  is  con- 
i68 


INDUSTRIAL  AMELIORATION 

vinced  that  he  alone,  by  his  unaided  efforts, 
is  supporting   a  widowed   mother,  and    her 
heart  is  moved  to  do  all  she  can  for  him. 
Next    to    her    sits    a    workingman    trained 
in  trades-union   methods.      He  knows    that 
the   boy's    natural    development  is  arrested, 
and  that  the  abnormal  activity  of  his  body 
and  mind  uses   up   the  force  which  should 
go  into  growth ;  moreover,  that  this  prema- 
ture use  of  his  powers  has  but  a  momentary 
and  specious  value.     He  is  forced  to  these 
conclusions   because   he   has   seen   many   a 
man,  entering  the  factory  at  eighteen   and 
twenty,    so   worn    out    by   premature    work 
that  he  was  "  laid  on  the  shelf "  within  ten 
or  fifteen  years.     He  knows  very  well  that 
he  can  do  nothing  in  the  way  of  ameliorat- 
ing the  lot  of  this  particular  boy;  that  his 
only  possible  chance  is  to  agitate  for  proper 
child-labor  laws ;  to  regulate,  and  if  possible 
prohibit,  street-vending  by  children,  in  order 
that  the  child  of  the  poorest  may  have  his 
school  time  secured  to  him,  and  may  have 
at  least  his  short  chance  for  growth. 
169 


DEMOCRACY  AND  SOCIAL  ETHICS 

These  three  people,  sitting  in  the  street 
car,  are  all  honest  and  upright,  and  recog- 
nize a  certain  duty  toward  the  forlorn  chil- 
dren of  the  community.  The  self-made  man 
is  encouraging  one  boy's  own  efforts;  the 
philanthropic  lady  is  helping  on  a  few  boys ; 
the  workingman  alone  is  obliged  to  include 
all  the  boys  of  his  class.  Workingmen,  be- 
cause of  their  feebleness  in  all  but  numbers, 
have  been  forced  to  appeal  to  the  state,  in 
order  to  secure  protection  for  themselves 
and  for  their  children.  They  cannot  all 
rise  out  of  their  class,  as  the  occasionally 
•  successful  man  has  done ;  some  of  them 
must  be  left  to  do  the  work  in  the  facto- 
ries and  mines,  and  they  have  no  money 
to  spend  in  philanthropy. 

Both  public  agitation  and  a  social  appeal 
to  the  conscience  of  the  community  is  neces- 
sary in  order  to  secure  help  from  the  state, 
and,  curiously  enough,  child-labor  laws*  once 
enacted  and  enforced  are  a  matter  of  great 
pride,  and  even  come  to  be  regarded  as  a 
register  of  the  community's  humanity  and 
170 


INDUSTRIAL  AMELIORATION 

enlightenment.  If  the  method  of  public  agi- 
tation could  find  quiet  and  orderly  expression 
in  legislative  enactment,  and  if  labor  measures 
could  be  submitted  to  the  examination  and 
judgment  of  the  whole  without  a  sense  of 
division  or  of  warfare,  we  should  have  the 
ideal  development  of  the  democratic  state. 

But  we  judge  labor  organizations  as  we 
do  other  living  institutions,  not  by  their 
declaration  of  principles,  which  we  seldom 
read,  but  by  their  blundering  efforts  to 
apply  their  principles  to  actual  conditions, 
and  by  the  oft-time  failure  of  their  repre- 
sentatives, when  the  individual  finds  himself 
too  weak  to  become  the  organ  of  corporate 
action. 

The  very  blunders  and  lack  of  organization 
too  often  characterizing  a  union,  in  marked 
contrast  to  the  orderly  management  of  a 
factory,  often  confuse  us  as  to  the  real 
issues  involved,  and  we  find  it  hard  to 
trust  uncouth  and  unruly  manifestations 
of  social  effort.  The  situation  is  made 
even  more  complicated  by  the  fact  that 
171 


DEMOCRACY   AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

those  who  are  formulating  a  code  of  asso 
ciated  action  so  often  break  through  the 
established  code  of  law  and  order.  As 
society  has  a  right  to  demand  of  the  re- 
forming individual  that  he  be  sternly  held 
to  his  personal  and  domestic  claims,  so  it 
has  a  right  to  insist  that  labor  organiza- 
tions shall  keep  to  the  hardly  won  standards 
of  public  law  and  order ;  and  the  community 
performs  but  its  plain  duty  when  it  registers 
its  protest  every  time  law  and  order  are 
subverted,  even  in  the  interest  of  the  so- 
called  social  effort.  Yet  in  moments  of 
industrial  stress  and  strain  the  community 
is  confronted  by  a  moral  perplexity  which 
may  arise  from  the  mere  fact  that  the  good 
of  yesterday  is  opposed  to  the  good  of  to- 
day, and  that  which  may  appear  as  a  choice 
between  virtue  and  vice  is  really  but  a  choice 
between  virtue  and  virtue.  In  the  disorder 
and  confusion  sometimes  incident  to  growth 
and  progress,  the  community  may  be  unable 
to  see  anything  but  the  unlovely  struggle 
itself. 

172 


INDUSTRIAL  AMELIORATION 

The  writer  recalls  a  conversation  between 
two  workingmen  who  were  leaving  a  lecture 
on  "  Organic  Evolution."  The  first  was 
much  puzzled,  and  anxiously  inquired  of 
the  second  "  if  evolution  could  mean  that 
one  animal  turned  into  another."  The  chal- 
lenged workman  -stopped  in  the  rear  of  the 
hall,  put  his  foot  upon  a  chair,  and  ex- 
pounded what  he  thought  evolution  did 
mean ;  and  this,  so  nearly  as  the  conversa- 
tion can  be  recalled,  is  what  he  said :  "  You 
see  a  lot  of  fishes  are  living  in  a  stream, 
which  overflows  in  the  spring  and  strands 
some  of  them  upon  the  bank.  The  weak 
ones  die  up  there,  but  others  make  a  big 
effort  to  get  back  into  the  water.  They 
dig  their  fins  into  the  sand,  breathe  as 
much  air  as  they  can  with  their  gills,  and 
have  a  terrible  time.  But  after  a  while 
their  fins  turn  into  legs  and  their  gills  into 
lungs,  and  they  have  become  frogs.  Of 
course  they  are  further  along  than  the 
sleek,  comfortable  fishes  who  sail  up  and 
down  the  stream  waving  their  tails  and 
173 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

despising  the  poor  damaged  things  thrash- 
ing around  on  the  bank.  He  —  the  lec- 
turer—  did  not  say  anything  about  men, 
but  it  is  easy  enough  to  think  of  us  poor 
devils  on  the  dry  bank,  struggling  without 
enough  to  live  on,  while  the  comfortable 
fellows  sail  along  in  the  water  with  all 
they  want  and  despise  us  because  we  thrash 
about."  His  listener  did  not  reply,  and  was 
evidently  dissatisfied  both  with  the  explana- 
tion and  the  application.  Doubtless  the  illus- 
tration was  bungling  in  more  than  its  setting 
forth,  but  the  story  is  suggestive. 

At  times  of  social  disturbance  the  law- 
abiding  citizen  is  naturally  so  anxious  for 
peace  and  order,  his  sympathies  are  so 
justly  and  inevitably  on  the  side  making 
for  the  restoration  of  law,  that  it  is  diffi- 
cult for  him  to  see  the  situation  fairly. 
He  becomes  insensible  to  the  unselfish 
impulse  which  may  prompt  a  sympathetic 
strike  in  behalf  of  the  workers  in  a  non- 
union shop,  because  he  allows  his  mind  to 
dwell  exclusively  on  the  disorder  which  has 
174 


INDUSTRIAL  AMELIORATION 

become  associated  with  the  strike.  He  is 
completely  side-tracked  by  the  ugly  phases 
of  a  great  moral  movement.  It  is  always 
a  temptation  to  assume  that  the  side  which 
has  respectability,  authority,  and  superior 
intelligence,  has  therefore  righteousness  as 
well,  especially  when  the  same  side  presents 
concrete  results  of  individual  effort  as  over 
against  the  less  tangible  results  of  associated 
effort. 

It  is  as  yet  most  diflficult  for  us  to  free 
ourselves  from  the  individualistic  point  of 
view  sufficiently  to  group  events  in  their 
social  relations  and  to  judge  fairly  those 
who  are  endeavoring  to  produce  a  social 
result  through  all  the  difficulties  of  associ- 
ated action.  The  philanthropist  still  finds 
his  path  much  easier  than  do  those  who  are 
attempting  a  social  morality.  In  the  first 
place,  the  public,  anxious  to  praise  what  it 
recognizes  as  an  undoubted  moral  effort 
often  attended  with  real  personal  sacrifice, 
joyfully  seizes  upon  this  manifestation  and 
overpraises  it,  recognizing  the  philanthropist 
175 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

as  an  old  friend  in  the  paths  of  righteous- 
ness, whereas  the  others  are  strangers  and 
possibly  to  be  distrusted  as  aliens.  It  is 
easy  to  confuse  the  response  to  an  abnormal 
number  of  individual  claims  with  the  re- 
sponse to  the  social  claim.  An  exaggerated 
personal  morality  is  often  mistaken  for  a 
social  morality,  and  until  it  attempts  to  min- 
ister to  a  social  situation  its  total  inadequacy 
is  not  discovered.  To  attempt  to  attain  a 
social  morality  without  a  basis  of  democratic 
experience  results  in  the  loss  of  the  only 
possible  corrective  and  guide,  and  ends  in 
an  exaggerated  individual  morality  but  not 
in  social  morality  at  all.  We  see  this  from 
time  to  time  in  the  care-worn  and  over- 
worked philanthropist,  who  has  taxed  his 
individual  will  beyond  the  normal  limits  and 
has  lost  his  clew  to  the  situation  among  a 
bewildering  number  of  cases.  A  man  who 
takes  the  betterment  of  humanity  for  his 
aim  and  end  must  also  take  the  daily  ex- 
periences of  humanity  for  the  constant  cor- 
rection of  his  process.  He  must  not  only 
176 


INDUSTRIAL  AMELIORATION 

test  and  guide  his  achievement  by  human 
experience,  but  he  must  succeed  or  fail  in 
proportion  as  he  has  incorporated  that  ex- 
perience with  his  own.  Otherwise  his  own 
achievements  become  his  stumbling-block, 
and  he  comes  to  believe  in  his  own  good- 
ness as  something  outside  of  himself.  He 
makes  an  exception  of  himself,  and  thinks 
that  he  is  different  from  the  rank  and  file  of 
his  fellows.  He  forgets  that  it  is  necessary 
to  know  of  the  lives  of  our  contemporaries, 
not  only  in  order  to  believe  in  their  integrity, 
which  is  after  all  but  the  first  beginnings 
of  social  morality,  but  in  order  to  attain  to 
any  mental  or  moral  integrity  for  ourselves 
or  any  such  hope  for  society. 


N  177 


CHAPTER   VI 

Educational  Methods 

As  democracy  modifies  our  conception  of 
life,  it  constantly  raises  the  value  and  func- 
tion of  each  member  of  the  community,  how- 
ever humble  he  may  be.  We  have  come  to 
believe  that  the  most  "  brutish  man "  has 
a  value  in  our  common  life,  a  function  to 
perform  which  can  be  fulfilled  by  no  one 
else.  We  are  gradually  requiring  of  the 
educator  that  he  shall  free  the  powers  of 
each  man  and  connect  him  with  the  rest  of 
life.  We  ask  this  not  merely  because  it  is 
the  man's  right  to  be  thus  connected,  but 
because  we  have  become  convinced  that  the 
social  order  cannot  afford  to  get  along  with- 
out his  special  contribution.  Just  as  we 
have  come  to  resent  all  hindrances  which 
keep  us  from  untrammelled  comradeship  with 
178 


EDUCATIONAL  METHODS 

our  fellows,  and  as  we  throw  down  unnatural 
divisions,  not  in  the  spirit  of  the  eighteenth- 
century  reformers,  but  in  the  spirit  of  those 
to  whom  social  equality  has  become  a  neces- 
sity for  further  social  development,  so  we 
are  impatient  to  use  the  dynamic  power 
residing  in  the  mass  of  men,  and  demand 
that  the  educator  free  that  power.  We 
believe  that  man's  moral  idealism  is  the 
constructive  force  of  progress,  as  it  has 
always  been ;  but  because  every  human  being 
is  a  creative  agent  and  a  possible  generator 
of  fine  enthusiasm,  we  are  sceptical  of  the 
moral  idealism  of  the  few  and  demand  the 
education  of  the  many,  that  there  may  be 
greater  freedom,  strength,  and  subtilty  of 
intercourse  and  hence  an  increase  of  dy- 
namic power.  We  are  not  content  to  include 
all  men  in  our  hopes,  but  have  become 
conscious  that  all  men  are  hoping  and  are 
part  of  the  same  movement  of  which  we  are 
a  part. 

Many  people  impelled  by  these  ideas  have 
become  impatient  with  the  slow  recognition 
179 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

on  the  part  of  the  educators  of  their  mani- 
fest obligation  to  prepare  and  nourish  the 
child  and  the  citizen  for  social  relations. 
The  educators  should  certainly  conserve  the 
learning  and  training  necessary  for  the  suc- 
cessful individual  and  family  life,  but  should 
add  to  that  a  preparation  for  the  enlarged 
social  efforts  which  our  increasing  democ- 
racy requires.  The  democratic  ideal  de- 
mands of  the  school  that  it  shall  give  the 
child's  own  experience  a  social  value ;  that 
it  shall  teach  him  to  direct  his  own  activi- 
ties and  adjust  them  to  those  of  other 
people.  We  are  not  willing  that  thousands 
of  industrial  workers  shall  put  all  of  their 
activity  and  toil  into  services  from  which 
the  community  as  a  whole  reaps  the  benefit, 
while  their  mental  conceptions  and  code  of 
morals  are  narrow  and  untouched  by  any 
uplift  which  the  consciousness  of  social 
value  might  give  them. 

We  are  impatient  with  the  schools  which 
lay  all  stress   on   reading  and   writing,   sus- 
pecting them  to  rest   upon  the  assumption 
1 80 


EDUCATIONAL  METHODS 

that  the  ordinary  experience  of  life  is  worth 
little,  and  that  all  knowledge  and  interest 
must  be  brought  to  the  children  through  the 
medium  of  books.  Such  an  assumption 
fails  to  give  the  child  any  clew  to  the  life 
about  him,  or  any  power  to  usefully  or  in- 
telligently connect  himself  with  it.  This 
may  be  illustrated  by  observations  made  in 
a  large  Italian  colony  situated  in  Chicago, 
the  children  from  which,  are,  for  the  most 
part,  sent  to  the  public  schools. 

The  members  of  the  Italian  colony  are 
largely  from  South  Italy,  —  Calabrian  and 
Sicilian  peasants,  or  Neapolitans  from  the 
workingmen's  quarters  of  that  city.  They 
have  come  to  America  with  the  distinct  aim 
of  earning  money,  and  finding  more  room 
for  the  energies  of  themselves  and  their 
children.  In  almost  all  cases  they  mean 
to  go  back  again,  simply  because  their 
imaginations  cannot  picture  a  continuous 
life  away  from  the  old  surroundings.  Their 
experiences  in  Italy  have  been  those  of  simple 
outdoor  activity,  and  their  ideas  have  come 
i8i 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

directly  to  them  from  their  struggle  with 
Nature,  —  such  a  hand-to-hand  struggle  as 
takes  place  when  each  man  gets  his  living 
largely  through  his  own  cultivation  of  the  soil, 
or  with  tools  simply  fashioned  by  his  own 
hands.  The  women,  as  in  all  primitive  life, 
have  had  more  diversified  activities  than 
the  men.  They  have  cooked,  spun,  and 
knitted,  in  addition  to  their  almost  equal 
work  in  the  fields.  Very  few  of  the  peasant 
men  or  women  can  either  read  or  write. 
They  are  devoted  to  their  children,  strong 
in  their  family  feeling,  even  to  remote  rela- 
tionships, and  clannish  in  their  community 
life. 

The  entire  family  has  been  upheaved,  and 
is  striving  to  adjust  itself  to  its  new  sur- 
roundings. The  men,  for  the  most  part, 
work  on  railroad  extensions  through  the 
summer,  under  the  direction  of  a  padrone, 
who  finds  the  work  for  them,  regulates  the 
amount  of  their  wages,  and  supplies  them 
with  food.  The  first  effect  of  immigration 
upon  the  women  is  that  of  idleness.    They  no 


EDUCATIONAL  METHODS 

longer  work  in  the  fields,  nor  milk  the  goats, 
nor  pick  up  faggots.  The  mother  of  the 
family  buys  all  the  clothing,  not  only  already 
spun  and  woven  but  made  up  into  garments, 
of  a  cut  and  fashion  beyond  her  powers.  It 
is,  indeed,  the  most  economical  thing  for 
her  to  do.  Her  house-cleaning  and  cook- 
ing are  of  the  simplest ;  the  bread  is  usually 
baked  outside  of  the  house,  and  the  maca- 
roni bought  prepared  for  boiling.  All  of 
those  outdoor  and  domestic  activities,  which 
she  would  naturally  have  handed  on  to  her 
daughters,  have  slipped  away  from  her.  The 
domestic  arts  are  gone,  with  their  absorb- 
ing interests  for  the  children,  their  educa- 
tional value,  and  incentive  to  activity.  A 
household  in  a  tenement  receives  almost 
no  raw  material.  For  the  hundreds  of  chil- 
dren who  have  never  seen  wheat  grow, 
there  are  dozens  who  have  never  seen  bread 
baked.  The  occasional  washings  and  scrub- 
bings  are  associated  only  with  discomfort. 
The  child  of  such  a  family  receives  constant 
stimulus  of  most  exciting  sort  from  his  city 
183 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

Street  life,  but  he  has  little  or  no  oppor- 
tunity to  use  his  energies  in  domestic 
manufacture,  or,  indeed,  constructively  in 
any  direction.  No  activity  is  supplied  to 
take  the  place  of  that  which,  in  Italy,  he 
would  naturally  have  found  in  his  own 
surroundings,  and  no  new  union  with  whole- 
some life  is  made  for  him. 

Italian  parents  count  upon  the  fact  that 
their  children  learn  the  English  language 
and  American  customs  before  they  do  them- 
selves, and  the  children  act  not  only  as 
interpreters  of  the  language,  but  as  buf- 
fers between  them  and  Chicago,  resulting 
in  a  certain  almost  pathetic  dependence 
of  the  family  upon  the  child.  When  a 
child  of  the  family,  therefore,  first  goes  to 
school,  the  event  is  fraught  with  much 
significance  to  all  the  others.  The  family 
has  no  social  life  in  any  structural  form 
and  can  supply  none  to  the  child.  He 
ought  to  get  it  in  the  school  and  give  it 
to  his  family,  the  school  thus  becoming 
the  connector  with  the  organized  society 
184 


EDUCATIONAL  METHODS 

about  them.  It  is  the  children  aged  six, 
eight,  and  ten,  who  go  to  school,  entering, 
of  course,  the  primary  grades.  If  a  boy  is 
twelve  or  thirteen  on  his  arrival  in  Amer- 
ica, his  parents  see  in  him  a  wage-earning 
factor,  and  the  girl  of  the  same  age  is  al- 
ready looking  toward  her  marriage. 

Let  us  take  one  of  these  boys,  who  has 
learned  in  his  six  or  eight  years  to  speak 
his  native  language,  and  to  feel  himself 
strongly  identified  with  the  fortunes  of  his 
family.  Whatever  interest  has  come  to  the 
minds  of  his  ancestors  has  come  through 
the  use  of  their  hands  in  the  open  air ;  and 
open  air  and  activity  of  body  have  been  the 
inevitable  accompaniments  of  all  their  expe- 
riences. Yet  the  first  thing  that  the  boy 
must  do  when  he  reaches  school  is  to  sit 
still,  at  least  part  of  the  time,  and  he  must 
learn  to  listen  to  what  is  said  to  him,  with 
all  the  perplexity  of  listening  to  a  foreign 
tongue.  He  does  not  find  this  very  stimu- 
lating, and  is  slow  to  respond  to  the  more 
subtle  incentives  of  the  schoolroom.  The 
185 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

peasant  child  is  perfectly  indifferent  to  show- 
ing off  and  making  a  good  recitation.  He 
leaves  all  that  to  his  schoolfellows,  who  are 
more  sophisticated  and  equipped  with  better 
English.  His  parents  are  not  deeply  inter- 
ested in  keeping  him  in  school,  and  will 
not  hold  him  there  against  his  inclination. 
Their  experience  does  not  point  to  the 
good  American  tradition  that  it  is  the 
educated  man  who  finally  succeeds.  The 
richest  man  in  the  Italian  colony  can  neither 
read  nor  write  — even  Italian.  His  cunning 
and  acquisitiveness,  combined  with  the  cre- 
dulity and  ignorance  of  his  countrymen, 
have  slowly  brought  about  his  large  fortune. 
The  child  himself  may  feel  the  stirring  of 
a  vague  ambition  to  go  on  until  he  is  as 
the  other  children  are;  but  he  is  not  popular 
with  his  schoolfellows,  and  he  sadly  feels 
the  lack  of  dramatic  interest.  Even  the 
pictures  and  objects  presented  to  him,  as 
well  as  the  language,  are  strange. 

If  we  admit  that  in  education  it  is  neces- 
sary to  begin  with   the   experiences  which 
i86 


EDUCATIONAL   METHODS 

the  child  already  has  and  to  use  his  sponta- 
neous and  social  activity,  then  the  city 
streets  begin  this  education  for  him  in  a 
more  natural  way  than  does  the  school. 
The  South  Italian  peasant  comes  from  a 
life  of  picking  olives  and  oranges,  and  he 
easily  sends  his  children  out  to  pick  up  coal 
from  railroad  tracks,  or  wood  from  buildings 
which  have  been  burned  down.  Unfortu- 
nately, this  process  leads  by  easy  transition 
to  petty  thieving.  It  is  easy  to  go  from  the 
coal  on  the  railroad  track  to  the  coal  and 
wood  which  stand  before  a  dealer's  shop; 
from  the  potatoes  which  have  rolled  from 
a  rumbling  wagon  to  the  vegetables  dis- 
played by  the  grocer.  This  is  apt  to  be 
the  record  of  the  boy  who  responds  con- 
stantly to  the  stimulus  and  temptations  of 
the  street,  although  in  the  beginning  his 
search  for  bits  of  food  and  fuel  was  prompted 
by  the  best  of  motives. 

The  school  has  to  compete  with  a  great 
deal   from    the    outside    in    addition    to   the 
distractions  of  the  neighborhood.     Nothing 
187 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

is  more  fascinating  than  that  mysterious 
"down  town,"  whither  the  boy  longs  to  go 
to  sell  papers  and  black  boots,  to  attend 
theatres,  and,  if  possible,  to  stay  all  night 
on  the  pretence  of  waiting  for  the  early 
edition  of  the  great  dailies.  If  a  boy  is  once 
thoroughly  caught  in  these  excitements,  noth- 
ing can  save  him  from  over-stimulation  and 
consequent  debility  and  worthlessness ;  he 
arrives  at  maturity  with  no  habits  of  regular 
work  and  with  a  distaste  for  its  dulness. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  are  hundreds 
of  boys  of  various  nationalities  who  con- 
scientiously remain  in  school  and  fulfil  all 
the  requirements  of  the  early  grades,  and 
at  the  age  of  fourteen  are  found  in  fac- 
tories, painstakingly  performing  their  work 
year  after  year.  These  later  are  the  men 
who  form  the  mass  of  the  population 
in  every  industrial  neighborhood  of  every 
large  city ;  but  they  carry  on  the  industrial 
processes  year  after  year  without  in  the  least 
knowing  what  it  is  all  about.  The  one 
fixed  habit  which  the  boy  carries  away  with 
i88 


EDUCATIONAL  METHODS 

him  from  the  school  to  the  factory  is  the 
feeling  that  his  work  is  merely  provisional. 
In  school  the  next  grade  was  continually 
held  before  him  as  an  object  of  attainment, 
and  it  resulted  in  the  conviction  that  the 
sole  object  of  present  effort  is  to  get  ready 
for  something  else.  This  tentative  attitude 
takes  the  last  bit  of  social  stimulus  out  of  his 
factory  work ;  he  pursues  it  merely  as  a  ne- 
cessity, and  his  very  mental  attitude  destroys 
his  chance  for  a  realization  of  its  social 
value.  As  the  boy  in  school  contracted 
the  habit  of  doing  his  work  in  certain  hours 
and  taking  his  pleasure  in  certain  other 
hours,  so  in  the  factory  he  earns  his  money 
by  ten  hours  of  dull  work  and  spends  it  in 
three  hours  of  lurid  and  unprofitable  pleas- 
ure in  the  evening.  Both  in  the  school 
and  in  the  factory,  in  proportion  as  his  work 
grows  dull  and  monotonous,  his  recreation 
must  become  more  exciting  and  stimulating. 
The  hopelessness  of  adding  evening  classes 
and  social  entertainments  as  a  mere  frill  to 
a  day  filled  with  monotonous  and  deadening 
189 


DEMOCRACY  AND  SOCIAL  ETHICS 

drudgery  constantly  becomes  more  apparent 
to  those  who  are  endeavoring  to  bring  a 
fuller  life  to  the  industrial  members  of  the 
community,  and  who  are  looking  forward 
to  a  time  when  work  shall  cease  to  be 
senseless  drudgery  with  no  self-expression 
on  the  part  of  the  worker.  It  sometimes 
seems  that  the  public  schools  should  con- 
tribute much  more  than  they  do  to  the 
consummation  of  this  time.  If  the  army 
of  school  children  who  enter  the  factories 
every  year  possessed  thoroughly  vitalized 
faculties,  they  might  do  much  to  lighten 
this  incubus  of  dull  factory  work  which 
presses  so  heavily  upon  so  large  a  number 
of  our  fellow-citizens.  Has  our  commercial- 
ism been  so  strong  that  our  schools  have 
become  insensibly  commercialized,  whereas 
we  supposed  that  our  industrial  life  was 
receiving  the  broadening  and  illuminating 
effects  of  the  schools?  The  training  of 
these  children,  so  far  as  it  has  been  voca- 
tional at  all,  has  been  in  the  direction  of 
clerical  work.  It  is  possible  that  the  busi- 
190 


EDUCATIONAL  METHODS 

ness  men,  whom  we  in  America  so  tremen- 
dously admire,  have  really  been  dictating  the 
curriculum  of  our  public  schools,  in  spite 
of  the  conventions  of  educators  and  the 
suggestions  of  university  professors.  The 
business  man,  of  course,  has  not  said,  "  I 
will  have  the  public  schools  train  office  boys 
and  clerks  so  that  I  may  have  them  easily 
and  cheaply,"  but  he  has  sometimes  said, 
"  Teach  the  children  to  write  legibly  and 
to  figure  accurately  and  quickly ;  to  acquire 
habits  of  punctuality  and  order;  to  be 
prompt  to  obey;  and  you  will  fit  them  to 
make  their  way  in  the  world  as  I  have  made 
mine."  Has  the  workingman  been  silent 
as  to  what  he  desires  for  his  children,  and 
allowed  the  business  man  to  decide  for  him 
there,  as  he  has  allowed  the  politician  to 
manage  his  municipal  affairs,  or  has  the 
workingman  so  far  shared  our  universal 
optimism  that  he  has  really  believed  that 
his  children  would  never  need  to  go  into 
industrial  life  at  all,  but  that  all  of  his  sons 
would  become  bankers  and  merchants } 
191 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

Certain  it  is  that  no  sufficient  study  has 
been  made  of  the  child  who  enters  into  in- 
dustrial life  early  and  stays  there  perma- 
nently, to  give  him  some  offset  to  its 
monotony  and  dulness,  some  historic  signifi- 
cance of  the  part  he  is  taking  in  the  life  of 
the  community. 

It  is  at  last  on  behalf  of  the  average  work- 
ingmen  that  our  increasing  democracy  im- 
pels us  to  make  a  new  demand  upon  the 
educator.  As  the  political  expression  of 
democracy  has  claimed  for  the  workingman 
the  free  right  of  citizenship,  so  a  code  of 
social  ethics  is  now  insisting  that  he  shall  be 
a  conscious  member  of  society,  having  some 
notion  of  his  social  and  industrial  value. 

The  early  ideal  of  a  city  that  it  was  a 
market-place  in  which  to  exchange  produce, 
and  a  mere  trading-post  for  merchants,  appar- 
ently still  survives  in  our  minds  and  is  con- 
stantly reflected  in  our  schools.  We  have 
either  failed  to  realize  that  cities  have  be- 
come great  centres  of  production  and  man- 
ufacture in  which  a  huge  population  is 
192 


EDUCATIONAL  METHODS 

engaged,  or  we  have  lacked  sufficient  pres- 
ence of  mind  to  adjust  ourselves  to  the 
change.  We  admire  much  more  the  men 
who  accumulate  riches,  and  who  gather  to 
themselves  the  results  of  industry,  than  the 
men  who  actually  carry  forward  industrial 
processes ;  and,  as  has  been  pointed  out,  our 
schools  still  prepare  children  almost  exclu- 
sively for  commercial  and  professional  life. 

Quite  as  the  country  boy  dreams  of  leav- 
ing the  farm  for  life  in  town  and  begins  early 
to  imitate  the  travelling  salesman  in  dress 
and  manner,  so  the  school  boy  within  the 
town  hopes  to  be  an  office  boy,  and  later  a 
clerk  or  salesman,  and  looks  upon  work  in 
the  factory  as  the  occupation  of  ignorant  and 
unsuccessful  men.  The  schools  do  so  little 
really  to  interest  the  child  in  the  life  of  pro- 
duction, or  to  excite  his  ambition  in  the  Hne 
of  industrial  occupation,  that  the  ideal  of  life, 
almost  from  the  very  beginning,  becomes  not 
an  absorbing  interest  in  one's  work  and  a 
consciousness  of  its  value  and  social  rela- 
tion, but  a  desire  for  money  with  which  un- 
o  193 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

meaning   purchases   may  be   made   and   an 
unmeaning  social  standing  obtained. 

The  son  of  a  workingman  who  is  success- 
ful in  commercial  life,  impresses  his  family 
and  neighbors  quite  as  does  the  prominent 
city  man  when  he  comes  back  to  dazzle  his 
native  town.  The  children  of  the  working 
people  learn  many  useful  things  in  the  pub- 
lic schools,  but  the  commercial  arithmetic, 
and  many  other  studies,  are  founded  on 
the  tacit  assumption  that  a  boy  rises  in  life 
by  getting  away  from  manual  labor,  —  that 
every  promising  boy  goes  into  business  or  a 
profession.  The  children  destined  for  fac- 
tory life  are  furnished  with  what  would  be 
most  useful  under  other  conditions,  quite  as 
the  prosperous  farmer's  wife  buys  a  folding- 
bed  for  her  huge  four-cornered  "  spare  room," 
because  her  sister,  who  has  married  a  city 
man,  is  obliged  to  have  a  folding-bed  in  the 
cramped  limits  of  her  flat.  Partly  because 
so  little  is  done  for  him  educationally,  and 
partly  because  he  must  live  narrowly  and 
dress  meanly,  the  life  of  the  average  laborer 
194 


EDUCATIONAL  METHODS 

tends  to  become  flat  and  monotonous,  with 
nothing  in  his  work  to  feed  his  mind  or  hold 
his  interest.  Theoretically,  we  would  all 
admit  that  the  man  at  the  bottom,  who  per- 
forms the  meanest  and  humblest  work,  so 
long  as  the  work  is  necessary,  performs  a 
useful  function ;  but  we  do  not  live  up  to  our 
theories,  and  in  addition  to  his  hard  and  un- 
interesting work  he  is  covered  with  a  sort 
of  contempt,  and  unless  he  falls  into  illness 
or  trouble,  he  receives  little  sympathy  or 
attention.  Certainly  no  serious  effort  is 
made  to  give  him  a  participation  in  the 
social  and  industrial  life  with  which  he 
comes  in  contact,  nor  any  insight  and  in- 
spiration regarding  it. 

Apparently  we  have  not  yet  recovered 
manual  labor  from  the  deep  distrust  which 
centuries  of  slavery  and  the  feudal  system 
have  cast  upon  it.  To  get  away  from  menial 
work,  to  do  obviously  little  with  one's  hands, 
is  still  the  desirable  status.  This  may 
readily  be  seen  all  along  the  line.  A  work- 
ingman's  family  will  make  every  effort  and 
195 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

sacrifice  that  the  brightest  daughter  be  sent 
to  the  high  school  and  through  the  normal 
school,  quite  as  much  because  a  teacher  in 
the  family  raises  the  general  social  standing 
and  sense  of  family  consequence,  as  that  the 
returns  are  superior  to  factory  or  even  office 
work.  "  Teacher  "  in  the  vocabulary  of  many 
children  is  a  synonym  for  women-folk  gentry, 
and  the  name  is  indiscriminately  applied  to 
women  of  certain  dress  and  manner.  The 
same  desire  for  social  advancement  is  ex- 
pressed by  the  purchasing  of  a  piano,  or  the 
fact  that  the  son  is  an  office  boy,  and  not  a 
factory  hand.  The  overcrowding  of  the  pro- 
fessions by  poorly  equipped  men  arises  from 
much  the  same  source,  and  from  the  convic- 
tion that,  "  an  education  "  is  wasted  if  a  boy 
goes  into  a  factory  or  shop. 

A  Chicago  manufacturer  tells  a  story  of 
twin  boys,  whom  he  befriended  and  meant 
to  give  a  start  in  life.  He  sent  them  both 
to  the  Athenaeum  for  several  winters  as  a 
preparatory  business  training,  and  then  took 
them  into  his  office,  where  they  speedily 
196 


EDUCATIONAL  METHODS 

became  known  as  the  bright  one  and  the 
stupid  one.  The  stupid  one  was  finally 
dismissed  after  repeated  trials,  when  to  the 
surprise  of  the  entire  establishitient,  he 
quickly  betook  himself  into  the  shops, 
where  he  became  a  wide-awake  and  valu- 
able workman.  His  chagrined  benefactor, 
in  telling  the  story,  admits  that  he  him- 
self had  fallen  a  victim  to  his  own  busi- 
ness training  and  his  early  notion  of 
rising  in  life.  In  reality  he  had  merely 
followed  the  lead  of  most  benevolent 
people  who  help  poor  boys.  They  test 
the  success  of  their  efforts  by  the  number 
whom  they  have  taken  out  of  factory  work 
into  some  other  and  "higher  occupation." 

Quite  in  line  with  this  commercial  ideal 
are  the  night  schools  and  institutions  of 
learning  most  accessible  to  working  people. 
First  among  them  is  the  business  college 
which  teaches  largely  the  mechanism  of 
type-writing  and  book-keeping,  and  lays 
all  stress  upon  commerce  and  methods  of 
distribution.  Commodities  are  treated  as 
197 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

exports  and  imports,  or  solely  in  regard  to 
their  commercial  value,  and  not,  of  course, 
in  relation  to  their  historic  development 
or  the  manufacturing  processes  to  which 
they  have  been  subjected.  These  schools 
do  not  in  the  least  minister  to  the  needs 
of  the  actual  factory  employee,  who  is  in  the 
shop  and  not  in  the  office.  We  assume 
that  all  men  are  searching  for  "puddings 
and  power,"  to  use  Carlyle's  phrase,  and 
furnish  only  the  schools  which  help  them 
to  those  ends. 

The  business  college  man,  or  even  the 
man  who  goes  through  an  academic  course 
in  order  to  prepare  for  a  profession,  comes 
to  look  on  learning  too  much  as  an  invest- 
ment from  which  he  will  later  reap  the 
benefits  in  earning  money.  He  does  not 
connect  learning  with  industrial  pursuits, 
nor  does  he  in  the  least  lighten  or  illumi- 
nate those  pursuits  for  those  of  his  friends 
who  have  not  risen  in  life.  "  It  is  as 
though  nets  were  laid  at  the  entrance  to 
education,    in   which    those    who    by   some 


EDUCATIONAL  METHODS 

means  or  other  escape  from  the  masses 
bowed  down  by  labor,  are  inevitably  caught 
and  held  from  substantial  service  to  their 
fellows."  The  academic  teaching  which  is 
accessible  to  workingmen  through  Univer- 
sity Extension  lectures  and  classes  at  settle- 
ments, is  usually  bookish  and  remote,  and 
concerning  subjects  completely  divorced 
from  their  actual  experiences.  The  men 
come  to  think  of  learning  as  something  to 
be  added  to  the  end  of  a  hard  day's  work, 
and  to  be  gained  at  the  cost  of  toilsome 
mental  exertion.  There  are,  of  course, 
exceptions,  but  many  men  who  persist  in 
attending  classes  and  lectures  year  after 
year  find  themselves  possessed  of  a  mass 
of  inert  knowledge  which  nothing  in  their 
experience  fuses  into  availability  or  realiza- 
tion. 

Among  the  many  disappointments  which 
the  settlement  experiment  has  brought  to 
its  promoters,  perhaps  none  is  keener  than 
the  fact  that  they  have  as  yet  failed  to 
work  out  methods  of  education,  specialized 
199 


DEMOCRACY  AND  SOCIAL  ETHICS 

and  adapted  to  the  needs  of  adult  working 
people  in  contra-distinction  to  those  em- 
ployed in  schools  and  colleges,  or  those 
used  in  teaching  children.  There  are 
many  excellent  reasons  and  explanations 
for  this  failure.  In  the  first  place,  the 
residents  themselves  are  for  the  most  part 
imbued  with  academic  methods  and  ideals, 
which  it  is  most  difficult  to  modify.  To 
quote  from  a  late  settlement  report,  "  The 
most  vaunted  educational  work  in  settle- 
ments amounts  often  to  the  stimulation 
mentally  of  a  select  few  who  are,  in  a 
sense,  of  the  academic  type  of  mind,  and 
who  easily  and  quickly  respond  to  the 
academic  methods  employed."  These  classes 
may  be  valuable,  but  they  leave  quite 
untouched  the  great  mass  of  the  factory 
population,  the  ordinary  workingman  of 
the  ordinary  workingman's  street,  whose 
attitude  is  best  described  as  that  of  "ac- 
quiescence," who  lives  through  the  aim- 
less passage  of  the  years  without  incentive 
"to    imagine,    to    design,    or     to     aspire." 


EDUCATIONAL  METHODS 

These  men  are  totally  untouched  by  all  the 
educational  and  philanthropic  machinery 
which  is  designed  for  the  young  and  the 
helpless  who  live  on  the  same  streets  with 
them.  They  do  not  often  drink  to  excess, 
they  regularly  give  all  their  wages  to  their 
wives,  they  have  a  vague  pride  in  their  supe- 
rior children ;  but  they  grow  prematurely  old 
and  stiff  in  all  their  muscles,  and  become 
more  and  more  taciturn,  their  entire  energies 
consumed  in  "  holding  a  job." 

Various  attempts  have  been  made  to 
break  through  the  inadequate  educational 
facilities  supplied  by  commercialism  and 
scholarship,  both  of  which  have  followed 
their  own  ideals  and  have  failed  to  look  at 
the  situation  as  it  actually  presents  itself. 
The  most  noteworthy  attempt  has  been  4he 
movement  toward  industrial  education,  the 
agitation  for  which  has  been  ably  seconded 
by  manufacturers  of  a  practical  type,  who 
have  from  time  to  time  founded  and  en- 
dowed technical  schools,  designed  for  work- 
ingmen's   sons.     The   early  schools   of   this 

20I 


DEMOCRACY   AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

type  inevitably  reflected  the  ideal  of  the 
self-made  man.  They  succeeded  in  trans- 
ferring a  few  skilled  workers  into  the  upper 
class  of  trained  engineers,  and  a  few  less 
skilled  workers  into  the  class  of  trained 
mechanics,  but  did  not  aim  to  educate  the 
many  who  are  doomed  to  the  unskilled  work 
which  the  permanent  specialization  of  the 
division  of  labor  demands. 

The  Peter  Coopers  and  other  good  men 
honestly  believed  that  if  intelligence  could 
be  added  to  industry,  each  workingman 
who  faithfully  attended  these  schools  could 
walk  into  increased  skill  and  wages,  and  in 
time  even  become  an  employer  himself. 
Such  schools  are  useful  beyond  doubt;  but 
so  far  as  educating  workingmen  is  con- 
cerned or  in  any  measure  satisfying  the 
democratic  ideal,  they  plainly  beg  the 
question. 

Almost  every  large  city  has  two  or  three 
polytechnic  institutions  founded  by  rich 
men,  anxious  to  help  "poor  boys."  These 
have    been   captured   by   conventional   edu- 


EDUCATIONAL  METHODS 

cators  for  the  purpose  of  fitting  young  men 
for  the  colleges  and  universities.  They  have 
compromised  by  merely  adding  to  the  usual 
academic  course  manual  work,  applied  mathe- 
matics, mechanical  drawing  and  engineering. 
Two  schools  in  Chicago,  plainly  founded  for 
the  sons  of  workingmen,  afford  an  illustration 
of  this  tendency  and  result.  On  the  other 
hand,  so  far  as  schools  of  this  type  have 
been  captured  by  commercialism,  they  turn 
out  trained  engineers,  professional  chemists, 
and  electricians.  They  are  polytechnics  of 
a  high  order,  but  do  not  even  pretend  to 
admit  the  workingman  with  his  meagre 
intellectual  equipment.  They  graduate  ma- 
chine builders,  but  not  educated  machine 
tenders.  Even  the  textile  schools  are 
largely  seized  by  young  men  who  expect  to 
be  superintendents  of  factories,  designers, 
or  manufacturers  themselves,  and  the  textile 
worker  who  actually  "  holds  the  thread "  is 
seldom  seen  in  them ;  indeed,  in  one  of  the 
largest  schools  women  are  not  allowed,  in  spite 
of  the  fact  that  spinning  and  weaving  have 
203 


DEMOCRACY  AND  SOCIAL  ETHICS 

traditionally  been  woman's  work,  and  that 
thousands  of  women  are  at  present  employed 
in  the  textile  mills. 

It  is  much  easier  to  go  over  the  old 
paths  of  education  with  "  manual  training " 
thrown  in,  as  it  were ;  it  is  much  simpler 
to  appeal  to  the  old  ambitions  of  "getting 
on  in  life,"  or  of  "  preparing  for  a  profes- 
sion," or  "  for  a  commercial  career,"  than  to 
work  out  new  methods  on  democratic  lines. 
These  schools  gradually  drop  back  into  the 
conventional  courses,  modified  in  some  slight 
degree,  while  the  adaptation  to  working- 
men's  needs  is  never  made,  nor,  indeed, 
vigorously  attempted.  In  the  meantime, 
the  manufacturers  continually  protest  that 
engineers,  especially  trained  for  devising 
machines,  are  not  satisfactory.  Three  gen- 
erations of  workers  have  invented,  but  we 
are  told  that  invention  no  longer  goes  on 
in  the  workshop,  even  when  it  is  artificially 
stimulated  by  the  offer  of  prizes,  and  that 
the  inventions  of  the  last  quarter  of  the 
nineteenth  century  have  by  no  means  ful- 
204 


EDUCATIONAL  METHODS 

filled  the  promise  of  the  earlier  three- 
quarters. 

Every  foreman  in  a  large  factory  has  had 
experience  with  two  classes  of  men :  first 
with  those  who  become  rigid  and  tolerate  no 
change  in  their  work,  partly  because  they 
make  more  money  "working  by  the  piece," 
when  they  stick  to  that  work  which  they 
have  learned  to  do  rapidly,  and  partly  be- 
cause the  entire  muscular  and  nervous  sys- 
tem has  become  by  daily  use  adapted  to 
particular  motions  and  resents  change.  Sec- 
ondly, there  are  the  men  who  float  in  and 
out  of  the  factory,  in  a  constantly  changing 
stream.  They  "  quit  work  "  for  the  slightest 
reason  or  none  at  all,  and  never  become 
skilled  at  anything.  Some  of  them  are  men 
of  low  intelligence,  but  many  of  them  are 
merely  too  nervous  and  restless,  too  impa- 
tient, too  easily  "  driven  to  drink,"  to  be  of 
any  use  in  a  modern  factory.  They  are  the 
men  for  whom  the  demanded  adaptation  is 
impossible. 

The  individual  from  whom  the  industrial 
205 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

order  demands  ever  larger  drafts  of  time 
and  energy,  should  be  nourished  and  en- 
riched from  social  sources,  in  proportion  as 
he  is  drained.  He,  more  than  other  men, 
needs  the  conception  of  historic  continuity 
in  order  to  reveal  to  him  the  purpose  and 
utility  of  his  work,  and  he  can  only  be  stimu- 
lated and  dignified  as  he  obtains  a  con- 
ception of  his  proper  relation  to  society. 
Scholarship  is  evidently  unable  to  do  this 
for  him;  for,  unfortunately,  the  same  ten- 
dency to  division  of  labor  has  also  produced 
over-specialization  in  scholarship,  with  the 
sad  result  that  when  the  scholar  attempts  to 
minister  to  a  worker,  he  gives  him  the  result 
of  more  specialization  rather  than  an  offset 
from  it.  He  cannot  bring  healing  and  solace 
because  he  himself  is  suffering  from  the  same 
disease.  There  is  indeed  a  deplorable  lack 
of  perception  and  adaptation  on  the  part  of 
educators  all  along  the  line. 

It  will  certainly  be  embarrassing  to  have 
our   age   written    down    triumphant   in   the 
matter  of   inventions,   in   that  our  factories 
206 


EDUCATIONAL  METHODS 

were  filled  with  intricate  machines,  the  result 
of  advancing  mathematical  and  mechanical 
knowledge  in  relation  to  manufacturing  pro- 
cesses, but  defeated  in  that  it  lost  its  head 
over  the  achievement  and  forgot  the  men. 
The  accusation  would  stand,  that  the  age 
failed  to  perform  a  like  service  in  the  ex- 
tension of  history  and  art  to  the  factory- 
employees  who  ran  the  machines;  that  the 
machine  tenders,  heavy  and  almost  dehuman- 
ized by  monotonous  toil,  walked  about  in 
the  same  streets  with  us,  and  sat  in  the  same 
cars ;  but  that  we  were  absolutely  indifferent 
and  made  no  genuine  effort  to  supply  to  them 
the  artist's  perception  or  student's  insight, 
which  alone  could  fuse  them  into  social  con- 
sciousness. It  would  further  stand  that  the 
scholars  among  us  continued  with  yet  more 
research,  that  the  educators  were  concerned 
only  with  the  young  and  the  promising,  and 
the  philanthropists  with  the  criminals  and 
helpless. 

There  is  a  pitiful  failure  to  recognize  the 
situation  in  which  the  majority  of  working 
207 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

people  are  placed,  a  tendency  to  ignore 
their  real  experiences  and  needs,  and,  most 
stupid  of  all,  we  leave  quite  untouched 
affections  and  memories  which  would  afford 
a  tremendous  dynamic  if  they  were  util- 
ized. 

We  constantly  hear  it  said  in  educational 
circles,  that  a  child  learns  only  by  "  doing," 
and  that  education  must  proceed  "  through  the 
eyes  and  hands  to  the  brain";  and  yet  for  the 
vast  number  of  people  all  around  us  who  do 
not  need  to  have  activities  artificially  pro- 
vided, and  who  use  their  hands  and  eyes  all 
the  time,  we  do  not  seem  able  to  reverse  the 
process.  We  quote  the  dictum,  "  What  is 
learned  in  the  schoolroom  must  be  applied  in 
the  workshop,"  and  yet  the  skill  and  handi- 
craft constantly  used  in  the  workshop  have  no 
relevance  or  meaning  given  to  them  by  the 
school ;  and  when  we  do  try  to  help  the 
workingman  in  an  educational  way,  we  com- 
pletely ignore  his  everyday  occupation.  Yet 
the  task  is  merely  one  of  adaptation.  It  is  to 
take  actual  conditions  and  to  make  them  the 
208 


EDUCATIONAL  METHODS 

basis  for  a  large  and  generous  method  of 
education,  to  perform  a  difficult  idealization 
doubtless,  but  not  an  impossible  one. 

We  apparently  believe  that  the  working- 
man  has  no  chance  to  realize  life  through  his 
vocation.  We  easily  recognize  the  historic 
association  in  regard  to  ancient  buildings. 
We  say  that  "generation  after  generation 
have  stamped  their  mark  upon  them,  have 
recorded  their  thoughts  in  them,  until  they 
have  become  the  property  of  all."  And  yet 
this  is  even  more  true  of  the  instruments  of 
labor,  which  have  constantly  been  held  in 
human  hands.  A  machine  really  represents 
the  "  seasoned  life  of  man "  preserved  and 
treasured  up  within  itself,  quite  as  much  as 
an  ancient  building  does.  At  present,  work- 
men are  brought  in  contact  with  the  machin- 
ery with  which  they  work  as  abruptly  as  if 
the  present  set  of  industrial  implements  had 
been  newly  created.  They  handle  the  ma- 
chinery day  by  day,  without  any  notion  of 
its  gradual  evolution  and  growth.  Few  of 
the  men  who  perform  the  mechanical  work 
p  309 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

in  the  great  factories  have  any  comprehension 
of  the  fact  that  the  inventions  upon  which 
the  factory  depends,  the  instruments  which 
they  use,  have  been  slowly  worked  out,  each 
generation  using  the  gifts  of  the  last  and 
transmitting  the  inheritance  until  it  has  be- 
come a  social  possession.  This  can  only  be 
understood  by  a  man  who  has  obtained  some 
idea  of  social  progress.  We  are  still  child- 
ishly pleased  when  we  see  the  further  sub- 
division of  labor  going  on,  because  the 
quantity  of  the  output  is  increased  thereby, 
and  we  apparently  are  unable  to  take  our 
attention  away  from  the  product  long  enough 
to  really  focus  it  upon  the  producer.  Theo- 
retically, "  the  division  of  labor  "  makes  men 
more  interdependent  and  human  by  draw- 
ing them  together  into  a  unity  of  purpose. 
"  If  a  number  of  people  decide  to  build  a 
road,  and  one  digs,  and  one  brings  stones, 
and  another  breaks  them,  they  are  quite 
inevitably  united  by  their  interest  in  the 
road.  But  this  naturally  presupposes  that 
they  know  where  the  road  is  going  to,  that 


EDUCATIONAL   METHODS 

they  have  some  curiosity  and  interest  about 
it,  and  perhaps  a  chance  to  travel  upon  it." 
If  the  division  of  labor  robs  them  of  interest 
in  any  part  of  it,  the  mere  mechanical  fact 
of  interdependence  amounts  to  nothing. 

The  man  in  the  factory,  as  well  as  the 
man  with  the  hoe,  has  a  grievance  beyond 
being  overworked  and  disinherited,  in  that 
he  does  not  know  what  it  is  all  about.  We 
may  well  regret  the  passing  of  the  time 
when  the  variety  of  work  performed  in  the 
unspecialized  workshop  naturally  stimulated 
the  intelligence  of  the  workingmen  and 
brought  them  into  contact  both  with  the 
raw  material  and  the  finished  product.  But 
the  problem  of  education,  as  any  advanced 
educator  will  tell  us,  is  to  supply  the  essen- 
tials of  experience  by  a  short  cut,  as  it  were. 
If  the  shop  constantly  tends  to  make  the 
workman  a  specialist,  then  the  problem  of 
the  educator  in  regard  to  him  is  quite  clear: 
it  is  to  give  him  what  may  be  an  offset  from 
the  over-specialization  of  his  daily  work, 
to  supply  him  with  general  information  and 

211 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

to  insist  that  he  shall  be  a  cultivated  mem- 
ber of  society  with  a  consciousness  of  his 
industrial  and  social  value. 

As  sad  a  sight  as  an  old  hand-loom  worker 
in  a  factory  attempting  to  make  his  clumsy 
machine  compete  with  the  flying  shuttles 
about  him,  is  a  workingman  equipped  with 
knowledge  so  meagre  that  he  can  get  no 
meaning  into  his  life  nor  sequence  between 
his  acts  and  the  far-off  results. 

Manufacturers,  as  a  whole,  however,  when 
they  attempt  educational  institutions  in  con- 
nection with  their  factories,  are  prone  to 
follow  conventional  lines,  and  to  exhibit  the 
weakness  of  imitation.  We  find,  indeed, 
that  the  middle-class  educator  constantly 
makes  the  mistakes  of  the  middle-class 
moralist  when  he  attempts  to  aid  working 
people.  The  latter  has  constantly  and  tra- 
ditionally urged  upon  the  workingman 
the  specialized  virtues  of  thrift,  industry, 
and  sobriety  —  all  virtues  pertaining  to  the 
individual.  When  each  man  had  his  own 
shop,   it   was    perhaps   wise    to    lay   almost 


EDUCATIONx^L  METHODS 

exclusive  stress  upon  the  industrial  virtues 
of  diligence  and  thrift ;  but  as  industry 
has  become  more  highly  organized,  life  be- 
comes incredibly  complex  and  interdepend- 
ent. If  a  workingman  is  to  have  a  con- 
ception of  his  value  at  all,  he  must  see 
industry  in  its  unity  and  entirety ;  he  must 
have  a  conception  that  will  include  not 
only  himself  and  his  immediate  family  and 
community,  but  the  industrial  organization 
as  a  whole.  It  is  doubtless  true  that  dex- 
terity of  hand  becomes  less  and  less  imper- 
ative as  the  invention  of  machinery  and 
subdivision  of  labor  proceeds;  but  it  be- 
comes all  the  more  necessary,  if  the  work- 
man is  to  save  his  life  at  all,  that  he 
should  get  a  sense  of  his  individual  rela- 
tion to  the  system.  Feeding  a  machine 
with  a  material  of  which  he  has  no  knowl- 
edge, producing  a  product,  totally  unrelated 
to  the  rest  of  his  life,  without  in  the  least 
knowing  what  becomes  of  it,  or  its  connec- 
tion with  the  community,  is,  of  course,  un- 
questionably deadening  to  his  intellectual 
213 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

and  moral  life.  To  make  the  moral  connec- 
tion it  would  be  necessary  to  give  him  a  so- 
cial consciousness  of  the  value  of  his  work,  and 
at  least  a  sense  of  participation  and  a  certain 
joy  in  its  ultimate  use;  to  make  the  intel- 
lectual connection  it  would  be  essential  to 
create  in  him  some  historic  conception  of 
the  development  of  industry  and  the  relation 
of  his  individual  work  to  it. 

Workingmen  themselves  have  made  at- 
tempts in  both  directions,  which  it  would 
be  well  for  moralists  and  educators  to 
study.  It  is  a  striking  fact  that  when 
workingmen  formulate  their  own  moral 
code,  and  try  to  inspire  and  encourage 
each  other,  it  is  always  a  large  and  gen- 
eral doctrine  which  they  preach.  They 
were  the  first  class  of  men  to  organize  an 
international  association,  and  the  constant 
talk  at  a  modern  labor  meeting  is  of  soli- 
darity and  of  the  identity  of  the  interests 
of  workingmen  the  world  over.  It  is  diffi- 
cult to  secure  a  successful  organization  of 
men  into  the  simplest  trades  organization 
214 


EDUCATIONAL  METHODS 

without  an  appeal  to  the  most  abstract 
principles  of  justice  and  brotherhood.  As 
they  have  formulated  their  own  morals  by- 
laying  the  greatest  stress  upon  the  largest 
morality,  so  if  they  could  found  their  own 
schools,  it  is  doubtful  whether  they  would 
be  of  the  mechanic  institute  type.  Courses 
of  study  arranged  by  a  group  of  working- 
men  are  most  naive  in  their  breadth  and 
generality.  They  will  select  the  history  of 
the  world  in  preference  to  that  of  any 
period  or  nation.  The  "wonders  of  sci- 
ence "  or  "  the  story  of  evolution "  will 
attract  workingmen  to  a  lecture  when  zool- 
ogy or  chemistry  will  drive  them  away. 
The  "outlines  of  literature"  or  "the  best 
in  literature "  will  draw  an  audience  when 
a  lecturer  in  English  poetry  will  be  solitary. 
This  results  partly  from  a  wholesome  desire 
to  have  general  knowledge  before  special 
knowledge,  and  is  partly  a  rebound  from 
the  specialization  of  labor  to  which  the 
workingman  is  subjected.  When  he  is 
free  from  work  and  can  direct  his  own 
215 


DEMOCRACY  AND  SOCIAL  ETHICS 

mind,  he  tends  to  roam,  to  dwell  upon 
large  themes.  Much  the  same  tendency  is 
found  in  programmes  of  study  arranged  by 
Woman's  Clubs  in  country  places.  The 
untrained  mind,  wearied  with  meaningless 
detail,  when  it  gets  an  opportunity  to 
make  its  demand  heard,  asks  for  general 
philosophy  and  background. 

In  a  certain  sense  commercialism  itself, 
at  least  in  its  larger  aspect,  tends  to  educate 
the  workingman  better  than  organized  edu- 
cation does.  Its  interests  are  certainly 
world-wide  and  democratic,  while  it  is  abso- 
lutely undiscriminating  as  to  country  and 
creed,  coming  into  contact  with  all  climes 
and  races.  If  this  aspect  of  commercialism 
were  utilized,  it  would  in  a  measure  counter- 
balance the  tendency  which  results  from  the 
subdivision  of  labor. 

The  most  noteworthy  attempt  to  utilize 
this  democracy  of  commerce  in  relation  to 
manufacturing  is  found  at  Dayton,  Ohio, 
in  the  yearly  gatherings  held  in  a  large 
factory  there.  Once  a  year  the  entire  force 
216 


EDUCATIONAL  METHODS 

is  gathered  together  to  hear  the  returns  of 
the  business,  not  so  much  in  respect  to  the 
profits,  as  in  regard  to  its  extension.  At 
these  meetings,  the  traveUing  salesmen  from 
various  parts  of  the  world  —  from  Constanti- 
nople, from  Berlin,  from  Rome,  from  Hong 
Kong  —  report  upon  the  sales  they  have 
made,  and  the  methods  of  advertisement  and 
promotion  adapted  to  the  various  countries. 
Stereopticon  lectures  are  given  upon  each 
new  country  as  soon  as  it  has  been  success- 
fully invaded  by  the  product  of  the  factory. 
The  foremen  in  the  various  departments  of 
the  factory  give  accounts  of  the  increased 
efficiency  and  the  larger  output  over  former 
years.  Any  man  who  has  made  an  inven- 
tion in  connection  with  the  machinery  of 
the  factory,  at  this  time  publicly  receives  a 
prize,  and  suggestions  are  approved  that 
tend  to  increase  the  comfort  and  social  facili- 
ties of  the  employees.  At  least  for  the  mo- 
ment there  is  a  complete  esprit  de  corps, 
and  the  youngest  and  least  skilled  employee 
sees  himself  in  connection  with  the  interests 
217 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

of  the  firm,  and  the  spread  of  an  invention. 
It  is  a  crude  example  of  what  might  be  done 
in  the  way  of  giving  a  large  framework  of 
meaning  to  factory  labor,  and  of  putting  it 
into  a  sentient  background,  at  least  on  the 
commercial  side. 

It  is  easy  to  indict  the  educator,  to  say 
that  he  has  gotten  entangled  in  his  own 
material,  and  has  fallen  a  victim  to  his  own 
methods;  but  granting  this,  what  has  the 
artist  done  about  it  —  he  who  is  supposed  to 
have  a  more  intimate  insight  into  the  needs 
of  his  contemporaries,  and  to  minister  to 
them  as  none  other  can.? 

It  is  quite  true  that  a  few  writers  are 
insisting  that  the  growing  desire  for  labor, 
on  the  part  of  many  people  of  leisure,  has 
its  counterpart  in  the  increasing  desire  for 
general  knowledge  on  the  part  of  many 
laborers.  They  point  to  the  fact  that  the 
same  duality  of  conscience  which  seems  to 
stifle  the  noblest  effort  in  the  individual  be- 
cause his  intellectual  conception  and  his 
achievement  are  so  difficult  to  bring  to- 
218 


EDUCATIONAL  METHODS 

gether,  is  found  on  a  large  scale  in  society 
itself,  when  we  have  the  separation  of  the 
people  who  think  from  those  who  work. 
And  yet,  since  Ruskin  ceased,  no  one  has 
really  formulated  this  in  a  convincing  form. 
And  even  Ruskin's  famous  dictum,  that  labor 
without  art  brutalizes,  has  always  been  inter- 
preted as  if  art  could  only  be  a  sense  of 
beauty  or  joy  in  one's  own  work,  and  not 
a  sense  of  companionship  with  all  other 
workers.  The  situation  demands  the  con- 
sciousness of  participation  and  well-being 
which  comes  to  the  individual  when  he  is 
able  to  see  himself  "  in  connection  and  co- 
operation with  the  whole " ;  it  needs  the 
solace  of  collective  art  inherent  in  collective 
labor. 

As  the  poet  bathes  the  outer  world  for  us 
in  the  hues  of  human  feeling,  so  the  work- 
man needs  some  one  to  bathe  his  surround- 
ings with  a  human  significance  —  some  one 
who  shall  teach  him  to  find  that  which  will 
give  a  potency  to  his  life.  His  education, 
however  simple,  should  tend  to  make  him 
219 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

widely  at  home  in  the  world,  and  to  give 
him  a  sense  of  simplicity  and  peace  in  the 
midst  of  the  triviality  and  noise  to  which  he 
is  constantly  subjected.  He,  like  other  men, 
can  learn  to  be  content  to  see  but  a  part, 
although  it  must  be  a  part  of  something. 

It  is  because  of  a  lack  of  democracy  that 
we  do  not  really  incorporate  him  in  the  hopes 
and  advantages  of  society,  and  give  him  the 
place  which  is  his  by  simple  right.  We  have 
learned  to  say  that  the  good  must  be  ex- 
tended to  all  of  society  before  it  can  be  held 
secure  by  any  one  person  or  any  one  class ; 
but  we  have  not  yet  learned  to  add  to  that 
statement,  that  unless  all  men  and  all  classes 
contribute  to  a  good,  we  cannot  even  be 
sure  that  it  is  worth  having.  In  spite  of 
many  attempts  we  do  not  really  act  upon 
either  statement. 


220 


CHAPTER   VII 
Political  Reform 

Throughout  this  volume  we  have  assumed 
that  much  of  our  ethical  maladjustment  in 
social  affairs  arises  from  the  fact  that  we  are 
acting  upon  a  code  of  ethics  adapted  to 
individual  relationships,  but  not  to  the  larger 
social  relationships  to  which  it  is  bunglingly 
applied.  In  addition,  however,  to  the  con- 
sequent strain  and  difficulty,  there  is  often 
an  honest  lack  of  perception  as  to  what  the 
situation  demands. 

Nowhere  is  this  more  obvious  than  in  our 
political  life  as  it  manifests  itself  in  certain 
quarters  of  every  great  city.  It  is  most  dif- 
ficult to  hold  to  our  political  democracy  and 
to  make  it  in  any  sense  a  social  expression 
and  not  a  mere  governmental  contrivance, 
unless  we  take  pains  to  keep   on   common 

231 


DEMOCRACY   AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

ground  in  our  human  experiences.  Other- 
wise there  is  in  various  parts  of  the  com- 
munity an  inevitable  difference  of  ethical 
standards  which  becomes  responsible  for 
much  misunderstanding. 

It  is  difficult  both  to  interpret  sympatheti- 
cally the  motives  and  ideals  of  those  who 
have  acquired  rules  of  conduct  in  experience 
widely  different  from  our  own,  and  also  to 
take  enough  care  in  guarding  the  gains 
already  made,  and  in  valuing  highly  enough 
the  imperfect  good  so  painfully  acquired 
and,  at  the  best,  so  mixed  with  evil.  This 
wide  difference  in  daily  experience  exhibits 
itself  in  two  distinct  attitudes  toward  politics. 
The  well-to-do  men  of  the  community  think 
of  politics  as  something  off  by  itself;  they 
may  conscientiously  recognize  political  duty 
as  part  of  good  citizenship,  but  political  effort 
is  not  the  expression  of  their  moral  or  social 
life.  As  a  result  of  this  detachment,  "  reform 
movements,"  started  by  business  men  and 
the  better  element,  are  almost  wholly  occu- 
pied in  the  correction  of  political  machinery 

222 


POLITICAL  REFORM 

and  with  a  concern  for  the  better  method  of 
administration,  rather  than  with  the  ultimate 
purpose  of  securing  the  welfare  of  the  peo- 
ple. They  fix  their  attention  so  exclusively 
on  methods  that  they  fail  to  consider  the 
final  aims  of  city  government.  This  ac- 
counts for  the  growing  tendency  to  put 
more  and  more  responsibility  upon  execu- 
tive officers  and  appointed  commissions  at 
the  expense  of  curtailing  the  power  of  the 
direct  representatives  of  the  voters.  Reform 
movements  tend  to  become  negative  and 
to  lose  their  educational  value  for  the  mass 
of  the  people.  The  reformers  take  the  role 
of  the  opposition.  They  give  themselves 
largely  to  criticisms  of  the  present  state  of 
affairs,  to  writing  and  talking  of  what  the 
future  must  be  and  of  certain  results  which 
should  be  obtained.  In  trying  to  better 
matters,  however,  they  have  in  mind  only 
political  achievements  which  they  detach  in 
a  curious  way  from  the  rest  of  life,  and  they 
speak  and  write  of  the  purification  of  politics 
as  of  a  thing  set  apart  from  daily  life. 
323 


DEMOCRACY  AND  SOCIAL  ETHICS 

On  the  other  hand,  the  real  leaders  of  the 
people  are  part  of  the  entire  life  of  the  com- 
munity which  they  control,  and  so  far  as  they 
are  representative  at  all,  are  giving  a  social 
expression  to  democracy.  They  are  often  po- 
litically corrupt,  but  in  spite  of  this  they  are 
proceeding  upon  a  sounder  theory.  Although 
they  would  be  totally  unable  to  give  it  abstract 
expression,  they  are  really  acting  upon  a  for- 
mulation made  by  a  shrewd  English  observer ; 
namely,  that,  "after  the  enfranchisement  of 
the  masses,  social  ideals  enter  into  political 
programmes,  and  they  enter  not  as  something 
which  at  best  can  be  indirectly  promoted  by 
government,  but  as  something  which  it  is 
the  chief  business  of  government  to  advance 
directly." 

Men  living  near  to  the  masses  of  voters, 
and  knowing  them  intimately,  recognize  this 
and  act  upon  it ;  they  minister  directly  to 
life  and  to  social  needs.  They  realize  that 
the  people  as  a  whole  are  clamoring  for  social 
results,  and  they  hold  their  power  because 
they  respond  to  that  demand.  They  are 
224 


POLITICAL  REFORM 

corrupt  and  often  do  their  work  badly ;  but 
they  at  least  avoid  the  mistake  of  a  certain 
type  of  business  men  who  are  frightened  by 
democracy,  and  have  lost  their  faith  in  the 
people.  The  two  standards  are  similar  to 
those  seen  at  a  popular  exhibition  of  pictures 
where  the  cultivated  people  care  most  for 
the  technique  of  a  given  painting,  the  mov- 
ing mass  for  a  subject  that  shall  be  domes- 
tic and  human. 

This  difference  may  be  illustrated  by  the 
writer's  experience  in  a  certain  ward  of  Chi- 
cago, during  three  campaigns,  when  efforts 
were  made  to  dislodge  an  alderman  who  had 
represented  the  ward  for  many  years.  In 
this  ward  there  are  gathered  together  fifty 
thousand  people,  representing  a  score  of  na- 
tionalities ;  the  newly  emigrated  Latin,  Teu- 
ton, Celt,  Greek,  and  Slav  who  live  there  have 
little  in  common  save  the  basic  experiences 
which  come  to  men  in  all  countries  and  un- 
der all  conditions.  In  order  to  make  fifty 
thousand  people,  so  heterogeneous  in  nation- 
ality, religion,  and  customs,  agree  upon  any 
Q  225 


DEMOCRACY  AND  SOCIAL  ETHICS 

demand,  it  must  be  founded  upon  universal 
experiences  which  are  perforce  individual 
and  not  social. 

An  instinctive  recognition  of  this  on  the 
part  of  the  alderman  makes  it  possible  to 
understand  the  individualistic  basis  of  his 
political  success,  but  it  remains  extremely 
difficult  to  ascertain  the  reasons  for  the  ex- 
treme leniency  of  judgment  concerning  the 
political  corruption  of  which  he  is  constantly 
guilty. 

This  leniency  is  only  to  be  explained  on 
the  ground  that  his  constituents  greatly 
admire  individual  virtues,  and  that  they  are 
at  the  same  time  unable  to  perceive  social 
outrages  which  the  alderman  may  be  com- 
mitting. They  thus  free  the  alderman  from 
blame  because  his  corruption  is  social,  and 
they  honestly  admire  him  as  a  great  man  and 
hero,  because  his  individual  acts  are  on  the 
whole  kindly  and  generous. 

In  certain  stages  of  moral  evolution,  a  man 
is  incapable  of  action  unless  the  results  will 
benefit  himself  or  some  one  of  his  acquaint- 
226 


POLITICAL  REFORM 

ances,  and  it  is  a  long  step  in  moral  progress 
to  set  the  good  of  the  many  before  the  inter- 
est of  the  few,  and  to  be  concerned  for  the 
welfare  of  a  community  without  hope  of 
an  individual  return.  How  far  the  selfish 
politician  befools  his  constituents  into  believ- 
ing that  their  interests  are  identical  with  his 
own ;  how  far  he  presumes  upon  their  inabil- 
ity to  distinguish  between  the  individual 
and  social  virtues,  an  inability  which  he 
himself  shares  with  them ;  and  how  far  he 
dazzles  them  by  the  sense  of  his  great- 
ness, and  a  conviction  that  they  participate 
therein,  it  is  difficult  to  determine. 

Morality  certainly  develops  far  earlier  in 
the  form  of  moral  fact  than  in  the  form  of 
moral  ideas,  and  it  is  obvious  that  ideas  only 
operate  upon  the  popular  mind  through  will 
and  character,  and  must  be  dramatized  be- 
fore they  reach  the  mass  of  men,  even  as 
the  biography  of  the  saints  have  been  after 
all  "  the  main  guide  to  the  stumbling  feet  of 
thousands  of  Christians  to  whom  the  Credo 
has  been  but  mysterious  words." 
227 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

Ethics  as  well  as  political  opinions  may 
be  discussed  and  disseminated  among  the 
sophisticated  by  lectures  and  printed  pages, 
but  to  the  common  people  they  can  only 
come  through  example  —  through  a  person- 
ality which  seizes  the  popular  imagination. 
The  advantage  of  an  unsophisticated  neigh- 
borhood is,  that  the  inhabitants  do  not  keep 
their  ideas  as  treasures  —  they  are  untouched 
by  the  notion  of  accumulating  them,  as  they 
might  knowledge  or  money,  and  they  frankly 
act  upon  those  they  have.  The  personal  ex- 
ample promptly  rouses  to  emulation.  In  a 
neighborhood  where  political  standards  are 
plastic  and  undeveloped,  and  where  there 
has  been  little  previous  experience  in  self- 
government,  the  office-holder  himself  sets 
the  standard,  and  the  ideas  that  cluster 
around  him  exercise  a  specific  and  perma- 
nent influence  upon  the  political  morality  of 
his  constituents. 

Nothing  is  more  certain  than  that  the 
quality  which  a  heterogeneous  population, 
living  in  one  of  the  less  sophisticated  wards, 
228 


POLITICAL   REFORM 

rfiost  admires  is  the  quality  of  simple  good- 
ness ;  that  the  man  who  attracts  them  is  the 
one  whom  they  believe  to  be  a  good  man. 
We  all  know  that  children  long  "to  be 
good  "  with  an  intensity  which  they  give  to 
no  other  ambition.  We  can  all  remember 
that  the  earliest  strivings  of  our  childhood 
were  in  this  direction,  and  that  we  vener- 
ated grown  people  because  they  had  attained 
perfection. 

Primitive  people,  such  as  the  South  Italian 
peasants,  are  still  in  this  stage.  They  want 
to  be  good,  and  deep  down  in  their  hearts 
they  admire  nothing  so  much  as  the  good 
man.  Abstract  virtues  are  too  difficult  for 
their  untrained  minds  to  apprehend,  and 
many  of  them  are  still  simple  enough  to 
believe  that  power  and  wealth  come  only  to 
good  people. 

The  successful  candidate,  then,  must  be  a 
good  man  according  to  the  morality  of  his 
constituents.  He  must  not  attempt  to  hold 
up  too  high  a  standard,  nor  must  he  attempt 
to  reform  or  change  their  standards.  His 
229 


DEMOCRACY   AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

safety  lies  in  doing  on  a  large  scale  the  good 
deeds  which  his  constituents  are  able  to  do 
only  on  a  small  scale.  If  he  believes  what 
they  believe  and  does  what  they  are  all 
cherishing  a  secret  ambition  to  do,  he  will 
dazzle  them  by  his  success  and  win  their 
confidence.  There  is  a  certain  wisdom  in 
this  course.  There  is  a  common  sense  in 
the  mass  of  men  which  cannot  be  neglected 
with  impunity,  just  as  there  is  sure  to  be 
an  eccentricity  in  the  differing  and  reform- 
ing individual  which  it  is  perhaps  well  to 
challenge. 

The  constant  kindness  of  the  poor  to  each 
other  was  pointed  out  in  a  previous  chapter, 
and  that  they  unfailingly  respond  to  the  need 
and  distresses  of  their  poorer  neighbors  even 
when  in  danger  of  bankruptcy  themselves. 
The  kindness  which  a  poor  man  shows  his 
distressed  neighbor  is  doubtless  heightened 
by  the  consciousness  that  he  himself  may  be 
in  distress  next  week;  he  therefore  stands 
by  his  friend  when  he  gets  too  drunk  to  take 
care  of  himself,  when  he  loses  his  wife  or 
230 


POLITICAL   REFORM 

child,  when  he  is  evicted  for  non-payment  of 
rent,  when  he  is  arrested  for  a  petty  crime. 
It  seems  to  such  a  man  entirely  fitting  that 
his  alderman  should  do  the  same  thing  on  a 
larger  scale  —  that  he  should  help  a  constit- 
uent out  of  trouble,  merely  because  he  is  in 
trouble,  irrespective  of  the  justice  involved. 
The  alderman  therefore  bails  out  his  con- 
stituents when  they  are  arrested,  or  says  a 
good  word  to  the  police  justice  when  they 
appear  before  him  for  trial,  uses  his  pull  with 
the  magistrate  when  they  are  likely  to  be 
fined  for  a  civil  misdemeanor,  or  sees'  what 
he  can  do  to  "  fix  up  matters "  with  the 
state's  attorney  when  the  charge  is  really  a 
serious  one,  and  in  doing  this  he  follows  the 
ethics  held  and  practised  by  his  constituents. 
All  this  conveys  the  impression  to  the  sim- 
ple-minded that  law  is  not  enforced,  if  the 
lawbreaker  have  a  powerful  friend.  One 
may  instance  the  alderman's  action  in  stand- 
ing by  an  Italian  padrone  of  the  ward  when 
he  was  indicted  for  violating  the  civil  ser- 
vice regulations.  The  commissioners  had 
231 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

sent  out  notices  to  certain  Italian  day-labor- 
ers who  were  upon  the  eligible  list  that  they 
were  to  report  for  work  at  a  given  day  and 
hour.  One  of  the  padrones  intercepted 
these  notifications  and  sold  them  to  the  men 
for  five  dollars  apiece,  making  also  the  usual 
bargain  for  a  share  of  their  wages.  The  pa- 
drone's entire  arrangement  followed  the  cus- 
tom which  had  prevailed  for  years  before  the 
establishment  of  civil  service  laws.  Ten  of 
the  laborers  swore  out  warrants  against  the 
padrone,  who  was  convicted  and  fined  seventy- 
five  dollars.  This  sum  was  promptly  paid 
by  the  alderman,  and  the  padrone,  assured 
that  he  would  be  protected  from  any  further 
trouble,  returned  uninjured  to  the  colony. 
The  simple  Italians  were  much  bewildered 
by  this  show  of  a  power  stronger  than  that 
of  the  civil  service,  which  they  had  trusted 
as  they  did  the  one  in  Italy.  The  first  vio- 
lation of  its  authority  was  made,  and  various 
sinister  acts  have  followed,  until  no  Italian 
who  is  digging  a  sewer  or  sweeping  a  street 
for  the  city  feels  quite  secure  in  holding  his 
232 


POLITICAL  REFORM 

job  unless  he  is  backed  by  the  friendship  of 
the  alderman.  According  to  the  civil  ser- 
vice law,  a  laborer  has  no  right  to  a  trial; 
many  are  discharged  by  the  foreman,  and 
find  that  they  can  be  reinstated  only  upon 
the  aldermanic  recommendation.  He  thus 
practically  holds  his  old  power  over  the 
laborers  working  for  the  city.  The  popular 
mind  is  convinced  that  an  honest  administra- 
tion of  civil  service  is  impossible,  and  that 
it  is  but  one  more  instrument  in  the  hands 
of  the  powerful. 

It  will  be  difficult  to  establish  genuine 
civil  service  among  these  men,  who  learn 
only  by  experience,  since  their  experiences 
have  been  of  such  a  nature  that  their  unani- 
mous vote  would  certainly  be  that  "civil 
service  "  is  "  no  good." 

As  many  of  his  constituents  in  this  case 
are  impressed  with  the  fact  that  the  aider- 
manic  power  is  superior  to  that  of  govern- 
ment, so  instances  of  actual  lawbreaking 
might  easily  be  cited.  A  young  man  may 
enter  a  saloon  long  after  midnight,  the  legal 
233 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

closing  hour,  and  seat  himself  at  a  gambling 
table,  perfectly  secure  from  interruption  or 
arrest,  because  the  place  belongs  to  an  alder- 
man; but  in  order  to  secure  this  immunity 
the  policeman  on  the  beat  must  pretend  not 
to  see  into  the  windows  each  time  that  he 
passes,  and  he  knows,  and  the  young  man 
knows  that  he  knows,  that  nothing  would 
embarrass  "  Headquarters "  more  than  to 
have  an  arrest  made  on  those  premises. 
A  certain  contempt  for  the  whole  ma- 
chinery of  law  and  order  is  thus  easily 
fostered. 

Because  of  simple  friendliness  the  alder- 
man is  expected  to  pay  rent  for  the  hard- 
pressed  tenant  when  no  rent  is  forthcoming, 
to  find  "jobs"  when  work  is  hard  to  get,  to 
procure  and  divide  among  his  constituents 
all  the  places  which  he  can  seize  from  the 
city  hall.  The  alderman  of  the  ward  we 
are  considering  at  one  time  could  make 
the  proud  boast  that  he  had  twenty-six 
hundred  people  in  his  ward  upon  the  pub- 
lic pay-roll.  This,  of  course,  included  day 
234 


POLITICAL  REFORM 

laborers,  but  each  one  felt  under  distinct 
obligations  to  him  for  getting  a  position. 
When  we  reflect  that  this  is  one-third  of 
the  entire  vote  of  the  ward,  we  realize  that 
it  is  very  important  to  vote  for  the  right 
man,  since  there  is,  at  the  least,  one  chance 
out  of  three  for  securing  work. 

If  we  recollect  further  that  the  franchise- 
seeking  companies  pay  respectful  heed  to 
the  applicants  backed  by  the  alderman,  the 
question  of  voting  for  the  successful  man 
becomes  as  much  an  industrial  one  as  a 
political  one.  An  Italian  laborer  wants  a 
"job"  more  than  anything  else,  and  quite 
simply  votes  for  the  man  who  promises 
him  one.  It  is  not  so  different  from  his 
relation  to  the  padrone,  and,  indeed,  the 
two  strengthen  each  other. 

The  alderman  may  himself  be  quite  sin- 
cere in  his  acts  of  kindness,  for  an  office 
seeker  may  begin  with  the  simple  desire 
to  alleviate  suffering,  and  this  may  gradu- 
ally change  into  the  desire  to  put  his  con- 
stituents under  obligations  to  him;  but  the 
235 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

action  of  such  an  individual  becomes  a 
demoralizing  element  in  the  community 
when  kindly  impulse  is  made  a  cloak  for 
the  satisfaction  of  personal  ambition,  and 
when  the  plastic  morals  of  his  constituents 
gradually  conform  to  his  own  undeveloped 
standards. 

The  alderman  gives  presents  at  weddings 
and  christenings.  He  seizes  these  days  of 
family  festivities  for  making  friends.  It  is 
easiest  to  reach  them  in  the  holiday  mood 
of  expansive  good-will,  but  on  their  side  it 
seems  natural  and  kindly  that  he  should 
do  it.  The  alderman  procures  passes  from 
the  railroads  when  his  constituents  wish 
to  visit  friends  or  attend  the  funerals  of 
distant  relatives ;  he  buys  tickets  galore  for 
benefit  entertainments  given  for  a  widow 
or  a  consumptive  in  peculiar  distress ;  he 
contributes  to  prizes  which  are  awarded  to 
the  handsomest  lady  or  the  most  popular 
man.  At  a  church  bazaar,  for  instance, 
the  alderman  finds  the  stage  all  set  for 
his  dramatic  performance.  When  others 
236 


POUTICAL  REFORM 

are  spending  pennies,  he  is  spending  dol- 
lars. When  anxious  relatives  are  canvass- 
ing to  secure  votes  for  the  two  most 
beautiful  children  who  are  being  voted 
upon,  he  recklessly  buys  votes  from  both 
sides,  and  laughingly  declines  to  say  which 
one  he  likes  best,  buying  off  the  young 
lady  who  is  persistently  determined  to  find 
out,  with  five  dollars  for  the  flower  bazaar, 
the  posies,  of  course,  to  be  sent  to  the  sick 
of  the  parish.  The  moral  atmosphere  of  a 
bazaar  suits  him  exactly.  He  murmurs 
many  times,  "  Never  mind,  the  money  all 
goes  to  the  poor;  it  is  all  straight  enough 
if  the  church  gets  it,  the  poor  won't  ask 
too  many  questions."  The  oftener  he  can 
put  such  sentiments  into  the  minds  of  his 
constituents,  the  better  he  is  pleased.  Noth- 
ing so  rapidly  prepares  them  to  take  his 
view  of  money  getting  and  money  spend- 
ing. We  see  again  the  process  disregarded, 
because  the  end  itself  is  considered  so  praise- 
worthy. 

There    is   something    archaic    in   a   com- 
237 


DEMOCRACY   AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

munity  of  simple  people  in  their  attitude 
toward  death  and  burial.  There  is  noth- 
ing so  easy  to  collect  money  for  as  a 
funeral,  and  one  involuntarily  remembers 
that  the  early  religious  tithes  were  paid  to 
ward  off  death  and  ghosts.  At  times  one 
encounters  almost  the  Greek  feeling  in  re- 
gard to  burial.  If  the  alderman  seizes 
upon  times  of  festivities  for  expressions  of 
his  good-will,  much  more  does  he  seize 
upon  periods  of  sorrow.  At  a  funeral  he 
has  the  double  advantage  of  ministering 
to  a  genuine  craving  for  comfort  and  sol- 
ace, and  at  the  same  time  of  assisting  a 
bereaved  constituent  to  express  that  curious 
feeling  of  remorse,  which  is  ever  an  accom- 
paniment of  quick  sorrow,  that  desire  to 
"  make  up  "  for  past  delinquencies,  to  show 
the  world  how  much  he  loved  the  person 
who  has  just  died,  which  is  as  natural  as 
it  is  universal. 

In  addition   to  this,  there  is,  among  the 
poor,    who    have    few    social    occasions,    a 
great  desire  for  a  well-arranged  funeral,  the 
238 


POLITICAL  REFORM 

grade  of  which  almost  determines  their 
social  standing  in  the  neighborhood.  The 
alderman  saves  the  very  poorest  of  his  con- 
stituents from  that  awful  horror  of  burial 
by  the  county;  he  provides  carriages  for 
the  poor,  who  otherwise  could  not  have 
them.  It  may  be  too  much  to  say  that  all 
the  relatives  and  friends  who  ride  in  the 
carriages  provided  by  the  alderman's  bounty 
vote  for  him,  but  they  are  certainly  influ- 
enced by  his  kindness,  and  talk  of  his  vir- 
tues during  the  long  hours  of  the  ride 
back  and  forth  from  the  suburban  ceme- 
tery. A  man  who  would  ask  at  such  a 
time  where  all  the  money  thus  spent  comes 
from  would  be  considered  sinister.  The 
tendency  to  speak  lightly  of  the  faults 
of  the  dead  and  to  judge  them  gently  is 
transferred  to  the  living,  and  many  a  man 
at  such  a  time  has  formulated  a  lenient 
judgment  of  political  corruption,  and  has 
heard  kindly  speeches  which  he  has  re- 
membered on  election  day.  "  Ah,  well,  he 
has  a  big  Irish  heart.  He  is  good  to  the 
239 


DEMOCRACY  AND  SOCIAr  ETHICS 

widow  and  the  fatherless."  "  He  knows 
the  poor  better  than  the  big  guns  who 
are  always  talking  about  civil  service  and 
reform." 

Indeed,  what  headway  can  the  notion  of 
civic  purity,  of  honesty  of  administration 
make  against  this  big  manifestation  of 
human  friendliness,  this  stalking  survival 
of  village  kindness.?  The  notions  of  the 
civic  reformer  are  negative  and  impotent 
before  it.  Such  an  alderman  will  keep  a 
standing  account  with  an  undertaker,  and 
telephone  every  week,  and  sometimes  more 
than  once,  the  kind  of  funeral  he  wishes 
provided  for  a  bereaved  constituent,  until  the 
sum  may  roll  up  into  "hundreds  a  year."  He 
understands  what  the  people  want,  and  min- 
isters just  as  truly  to  a  great  human  need  as 
the  musician  or  the  artist.  An  attempt  to 
substitute  what  we  might  call  a  later  stand- 
ard was  made  at  one  time  when  a  delicate 
little  child  was  deserted  in  the  Hull- House 
nursery.  An  investigation  showed  that  it 
had  been  born  ten  days  previously  in  the 
240 


POLITICAL  REFORM 

Cook  County  hospital,  but  no  trace  could  be 
found  of  the  unfortunate  mother.  The  little 
child  lived  for  several  weeks,  and  then,  in 
spite  of  every  care,  died.  It  was  decided  to 
have  it  buried  by  the  county  authorities,  and 
the  wagon  was  to  arrive  at  eleven  o'clock; 
about  nine  o'clock  in  the  morning  the  rumor 
of  this  awful  deed  reached  the  neighbors. 
A  half  dozen  of  them  came,  in  a  very 
excited  state  of  mind,  to  protest.  They  took 
up  a  collection  out  of  their  poverty  with 
which  to  defray  a  funeral.  The  residents  of 
Hull- House  were  then  comparatively  new  in 
the  neighborhood  and  did  not  realize  that 
they  were  really  shocking  a  genuine  moral 
sentiment  of  the  community.  In  their  crude- 
ness  they  instanced  the  care  and  tenderness 
which  had  been  expended  upon  the  little 
creature  while  it  was  alive ;  that  it  had  had 
every  attention  from  a  skilled  physician  and 
a  trained  nurse,  and  even  intimated  that  the 
excited  members  of  the  group  had  not  taken 
part  in  this,  and  that  it  now  lay  with  the 
nursery  to  decide  that  it  should  be  buried  as 

R  241 


DEMOCRACY  AND  SOCIAL  ETHICS 

it  had  been  born,  at  the  county's  expense. 
It  is  doubtful  if  Hull-House  has  ever  done 
anything  which  injured  it  so  deeply  in  the 
minds  of  some  of  its  neighbors.  It  was 
only  forgiven  by  the  most  indulgent  on  the 
ground  that  the  residents  were  spinsters,  and 
could  not  know  a  mother's  heart.  No  one 
born  and  reared  in  the  community  could 
possibly  have  made  a  mistake  like  that.  No 
one  who  had  studied  the  ethical  standards 
with  any  care  could  have  bungled  so 
completely. 

We  are  constantly  underestimating  the 
amount  of  sentiment  among  simple  people. 
The  songs  which  are  most  popular  among 
them  are  those  of  a  reminiscent  old  age,  in 
which  the  ripened  soul  calmly  recounts  and 
regrets  the  sins  of  his  youth,  songs  in 
which  the  wayward  daughter  is  forgiven 
by  her  loving  parents,  in  which  the  lovers 
are  magnanimous  and  faithful  through  all 
vicissitudes.  The  tendency  is  to  condone 
and  forgive,  and  not  hold  too  rigidly  to  a 
standard.  In  the  theatres  it  is  the  magnani- 
242 


POLITICAL  REFORM 

mous  man,  the  kindly  reckless  villain  who  is 
always  applauded.  So  shrewd  an  observer 
as  Samuel  Johnson  once  remarked  that  it 
was  surprising  to  find  how  much  more  kind- 
ness than  justice  society  contained. 

On  the  same  basis  the  alderman  manages 
several  saloons,  one  down  town  within  easy 
access  of  the  city  hall,  where  he  can  catch 
the  more  important  of  his  friends.  Here 
again  he  has  seized  upon  an  old  tradition 
and  primitive  custom,  the  good  fellowship 
which  has  long  been  best  expressed  when 
men  drink  together.  The  saloons  offer  a 
common  meeting  ground,  with  stimulus 
enough  to  free  the  wits  and  tongues  of  the 
men  who  meet  there. 

He  distributes  each  Christmas  many  tons 
of  turkeys  not  only  to  voters,  but  to  families 
who  are  represented  by  no  vote.  By  a  judi- 
cious management  some  families  get  three 
or  four  turkeys  apiece ;  but  what  of  that,  the 
alderman  has  none  of  the  nagging  rules  of 
the  charitable  societies,  nor  does  he  de- 
clare that  because  a  man  wants  two  tur- 
243 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

keys  for  Christmas,  he  is  a  scoundrel  who 
shall  never  be  allowed  to  eat  turkey  again. 
As  he  does  not  distribute  his  Christmas 
favors  from  any  hardly  acquired  philan- 
thropic motive,  there  is  no  disposition  to 
apply  the  carefully  evolved  rules  of  the 
charitable  societies  to  his  beneficiaries.  Of 
course,  there  are  those  who  suspect  that  the 
benevolence  rests  upon  self-seeking  motives, 
and  feel  themselves  quite  freed  from  any 
sense  of  gratitude ;  others  go  further  and 
glory  in  the  fact  that  they  can  thus  "  soak 
the  alderman."  An  example  of  this  is  the 
young  man  who  fills  his  pockets  with  a  hand- 
ful of  cigars,  giving  a  sly  wink  at  the  others. 
But  this  freedom  from  any  sense  of  obli- 
gation is  often  the  first  step  downward  to 
the  position  where  he  is  willing  to  sell  his 
vote  to  both  parties,  and  then  scratch  his 
ticket  as  he  pleases.  The  writer  recalls  a 
conversation  with  a  man  in  which  he  com- 
plained quite  openly,  and  with  no  sense  of 
shame,  that  his  vote  had  "  sold  for  only  two 
dollars  this  year,"  and  that  he  was  "  awfully 
244 


POLITICAL  REFORM 

disappointed."  The  writer  happened  to  know- 
that  his  income  during  the  nine  months 
previous  had  been  but  twenty-eight  dollars, 
and  that  he  was  in  debt  thirty-two  dollars, 
and  she  could  well  imagine  the  eagerness 
with  which  he  had  counted  upon  this  source 
of  revenue.  After  some  years  the  selling 
of  votes  becomes  a  commonplace,  and  but 
little  attempt  is  made  upon  the  part  of 
the  buyer  or  seller  to  conceal  the  fact,  if 
the  transaction  runs  smoothly. 

A  certain  lodging-house  keeper  at  one 
time  sold  the  votes  of  his  entire  house  to 
a  political  party  and  was  "well  paid  for  it 
too " ;  but  being  of  a  grasping  turn,  he  also 
sold  the  house  for  the  same  election  to  the 
rival  party.  Such  an  outrage  could  not  be 
borne.  The  man  was  treated  to  a  modern 
version  of  tar  and  feathers,  and  as  a  result  of 
being  held  under  a  street  hydrant  in  Novem- 
ber, contracted  pneumonia  which  resulted 
in  his  death.  No  ofHcial  investigation  took 
place,  since  the  doctor's  certificate  of  pneu- 
monia was  sufficient  for  legal  burial,  and 
245 


DEMOCRACY   AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

public  sentiment  sustained  the  action.  In 
various  conversations  which  the  writer  had 
concerning  the  entire  transaction,  she  dis- 
covered great  indignation  concerning  his 
duplicity  and  treachery,  but  none  whatever 
for  his  original  offence  of  selling  out  the 
votes  of  his  house. 

A  club  will  be  started  for  the  express  pur- 
pose of  gaining  a  reputation  for  political 
power  which  may  later  be  sold  out.  The 
president  and  executive  committee  of  such 
a  club,  who  will  naturally  receive  the  funds, 
promise  to  divide  with  "  the  boys "  who 
swell  the  size  of  the  membership.  A  reform 
movement  is  at  first  filled  with  recruits  who 
are  active  and  loud  in  their  assertions  of  the 
number  of  votes  they  can  "deliver."  The 
reformers  are  delighted  with  this  display  of 
zeal,  and  only  gradually  find  out  that  many 
of  the  recruits  are  there  for  the  express  pur- 
pose of  being  bought  by  the  other  side ;  that 
they  are  most  active  in  order  to  seem  valu- 
able, and  thus  raise  the  price  of  their  alle- 
giance when  they  are  ready  to  sell.  Reformers 
246 


POLITICAL  REFORM 

seeing  them  drop  away  one  by  one,  talk  of 
desertion  from  the  ranks  of  reform,  and  of  the 
power  of  money  over  well-meaning  men,  who 
are  too  weak  to  withstand  temptation;  but 
in  reality  the  men  are  not  deserters  because 
they  have  never  actually  been  enrolled  in 
the  ranks.  The  money  they  take  is  neither 
a  bribe  nor  the  price  of  their  loyalty,  it  is 
simply  the  consummation  of  a  long-cherished 
plan  and  a  well-earned  reward.  They  came 
into  the  new  movement  for  the  purpose  of 
being  bought  out  of  it,  and  have  success- 
fully accomplished  that  purpose. 

Hull- House  assisted  in  carrying  on  two  un- 
successful campaigns  against  the  same  alder- 
man. In  the  two  years  following  the  end  of 
the  first  one,  nearly  every  man  who  had  been 
prominent  in  it  had  received  an  office  from 
the  reelected  alderman.  A  printer  had  been 
appointed  to  a  clerkship  in  the  city  hall ;  a 
driver  received  a  large  salary  for  services  in 
the  police  barns ;  the  candidate  himself,  a 
bricklayer,  held  a  position  in  the  city  con- 
struction department.  At  the  beginning  of 
247 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

the  next  campaign,  the  greatest  difficulty 
was  experienced  in  finding  a  candidate,  and 
each  one  proposed,  demanded  time  to  con- 
sider the  proposition.  During  this  period 
he  invariably  became  the  recipient  of  the 
alderman's  bounty.  The  first  one,  who  was 
foreman  of  a  large  factory,  was  reported  to 
have  been  bought  off  by  the  promise  that 
the  city  institutions  would  use  the  product 
of  his  firm.  The  second  one,  a  keeper  of 
a  grocery  and  family  saloon,  with  large  pop- 
ularity, was  promised  the  aldermanic  nomi- 
nation on  the  regular  ticket  at  the  expiration 
of  the  term  of  office  held  by  the  alderman's 
colleague,  and  it  may  be  well  to  state  in 
passing  that  he  was  thus  nominated  and 
successfully  elected.  The  third  proposed 
candidate  received  a  place  for  his  son  in  the 
office  of  the  city  attorney. 

Not  only  are  offices  in  his  gift,  but  all 
smaller  favors  as  well.  Any  requests  to  the 
council,  or  special  licenses,  must  be  pre- 
sented by  the  alderman  of  the  ward  in 
which  the  person  desiring  the  favor  resides. 
248 


POLITICAL  REFORM 

There  is  thus  constant  opportunity  for  the 
alderman  to  put  his  constituents  under  obli- 
gations to  him,  to  make  it  difficult  for  a  con- 
stituent to  withstand  him,  or  for  one  with 
large  interests  to  enter  into  political  action 
at  all.  From  the  Italian  pedler  who  wants 
a  license  to  peddle  fruit  in  the  street,  to  the 
large  manufacturing  company  who  desires  to 
tunnel  an  alley  for  the  sake  of  conveying 
pipes  from  one  building  to  another,  every- 
body is  under  obligations  to  his  alderman, 
and  is  constantly  made  to  feel  it.  In  short, 
these  very  regulations  for  presenting  re- 
quests to  the  council  have  been  made,  by 
the  aldermen  themselves,  for  the  express 
purpose  of  increasing  the  dependence  of 
their  constituents,  and  thereby  augmenting 
aldermanic  power  and  prestige. 

The  alderman  has  also  a  very  singular 
hold  upon  the  property  owners  of  his  ward. 
The  paving,  both  of  the  streets  and  side- 
walks throughout  his  district,  is  disgraceful ; 
and  in  the  election  speeches  the  reform  side 
holds  him  responsible  for  this  condition,  and 
249 


DEMOCRACY  AND  SOCIAL  ETHICS 

promises  better  paving  under  another  regime. 
But  the  paving  could  not  be  made  better 
without  a  special  assessment  upon  the  prop- 
erty owners  of  the  vicinity,  and  paying 
more  taxes  is  exactly  what  his  constituents 
do  not  want  to  do.  In  reality,  "getting 
them  off,"  or  at  the  worst  postponing  the 
time  of  the  improvement,  is  one  of  the  gen- 
uine favors  which  he  performs.  A  move- 
ment to  have  the  paving  done  from  a 
general  fund  would  doubtless  be  opposed  by 
the  property  owners  in  other  parts  of  the  city 
who  have  already  paid  for  the  asphalt  bor- 
dering their  own  possessions,  but  they  have 
no  conception  of  the  struggle  and  possible 
bankruptcy  which  repaving  may  mean  to 
the  small  property  owner,  nor  how  his  chief 
concern  may  be  to  elect  an  alderman  who 
cares  more  for  the  feelings  and  pocket-books 
of  his  constituents  than  he  does  for  the 
repute  and  cleanliness  of  his  city. 

The  alderman  exhibited  great  wisdom  in 
procuring   from    certain    of    his    down-town 
friends    the  sum   of   three  thousand    dollars 
250 


POLITICAL  REFORM 

with  which  to  uniform  and  equip  a  boys' 
temperance  brigade  which  had  been  formed 
in  one  of  the  ward  churches  a  few  months 
before  his  campaign.  Is  it  strange  that  the 
good  leader,  whose  heart  was  filled  with  in- 
nocent pride  as  he  looked  upon  these  prom- 
ising young  scions  of  virtue,  should  decline 
to  enter  into  a  reform  campaign  ?  Of  what 
use  to  suggest  that  uniforms  and  bayonets 
for  the  purpose  of  promoting  temperance, 
bought  with  money  contributed  by  a  man 
who  was  proprietor  of  a  saloon  and  a  gam- 
bling house,  might  perhaps  confuse  the 
ethics  of  the  young  soldiers  ?  Why  take 
the  pains  to  urge  that  it  was  vain  to  lecture 
and  march  abstract  virtues  into  them,  so 
long  as  the  "champion  boodler"  of  the  town 
was  the  man  whom  the  boys  recognized  as 
a  loyal  and  kindhearted  friend,  the  public- 
spirited  citizen,  whom  their  fathers  enthu- 
siastically voted  for,  and  their  mothers  called 
"the  friend  of  the  poor."  As  long  as  the 
actual  and  tangible  success  is  thus  embodied, 
marching  whether  in  kindergartens  or  bri- 
«5i 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

gades,   talking  whether  in   clubs  or  classes, 
does  little  to  change  the  code  of  ethics. 

The  question  of  where  does  the  money 
come  from  which  is  spent  so  successfully, 
does  of  course  occur  to  many  minds.  The 
more  primitive  people  accept  the  truth- 
ful statement  of  its  sources  without  any 
shock  to  their  moral  sense.  To  their  sim- 
ple minds  he  gets  it  "  from  the  rich "  and, 
so  long  as  he  again  gives  it  out  to  the  poor 
as  a  true  Robin  Hood,  with  open  hand,  they 
have  no  objections  to  offer.  Their  ethics 
are  quite  honestly  those  of  the  merry-mak- 
ing foresters.  The  next  less  primitive  peo- 
ple of  the  vicinage  are  quite  willing  to  admit 
that  he  leads  the  "  gang  "  in  the  city  council, 
and  sells  out  the  city  franchises;  that  he 
makes  deals  with  the  franchise-seeking  com- 
panies ;  that  he  guarantees  to  steer  dubious 
measures  through  the  council,  for  which  he 
demands  liberal  pay ;  that  he  is,  in  short,  a 
successful  "boodler."  When,  however,  there 
is  intellect  enough  to  get  this  point  of  view, 
there  is  also  enough  to  make  the  contention 
252 


POLITICAL  REFORM 

that  this  is  universally  done,  that  all  the  al- 
dermen do  it  more  or  less  successfully,  but 
that  the  alderman  of  this  particular  ward  is 
unique  in  being  so  generous;  that  such  a 
state  of  affairs  is  to  be  deplored,  of  course ; 
but  that  that  is  the  way  business  is  run, 
and  we  are  fortunate  when  a  kind-hearted 
man  who  is  close  to  the  people  gets  a 
large  share  of  the  spoils;  that  he  serves 
franchised  companies  who  employ  men  in 
the  building  and  construction  of  their  en- 
terprises, and  that  they  are  bound  in  return 
to  give  work  to  his  constituents.  It  is 
again  the  justification  of  stealing  from  the 
rich  to  give  to  the  poor.  Even  when  they 
are  intelligent  enough  to  complete  the  circle, 
and  to  see  that  the  money  comes,  not  from 
the  pockets  of  the  companies'  agents,  but 
from  the  street-car  fares  of  people  like  them- 
selves, it  almost  seems  as  if  they  would 
rather  pay  two  cents  more  each  time  they 
ride  than  to  give  up  the  consciousness  that 
they  have  a  big,  warm-hearted  friend  at  court 
who  will  stand  by  them  in  an  emergency. 
253 


DEMOCRACY  AND  SOCIAL  ETHICS 

The  sense  of  just  dealing  comes  apparently 
much  later  than  the  desire  for  protection 
and  indulgence.  On  the  whole,  the  gifts  and 
favors  are  taken  quite  simply  as  an  evidence 
of  genuine  loving-kindness.  The  alderman 
is  really  elected  because  he  is  a  good  friend 
and  neighbor.  He  is  corrupt,  of  course,  but 
he  is  not  elected  because  he  is  corrupt,  but 
rather  in  spite  of  it.  His  standard  suits 
his  constituents.  He  exemplifies  and  exag- 
gerates the  popular  type  of  a  good  man.  He 
has  attained  what  his  constituents  secretly 
long  for. 

At  one  end  of  the  ward  there  is  a  street 
of  good  houses,  familiarly  called  "  Con  Row." 
The  term  is  perhaps  quite  unjustly  used,  but 
it  is  nevertheless  universally  applied,  because 
many  of  these  houses  are  occupied  by  pro- 
fessional office  holders.  This  row  is  sup- 
posed to  form  a  happy  hunting-ground  of 
the  successful  politician,  where  he  can  live 
in  prosperity,  and  still  maintain  his  vote 
and  influence  in  the  ward.  It  would  be 
difficult  to  justly  estimate  the  influence 
254 


POLITICAL  REFORM 

which  this  group  of  successful,  prominent 
men,  including  the  alderman  who  lives 
there,  have  had  upon  the  ideals  of  the 
youth  in  the  vicinity.  The  path  which 
leads  to  riches  and  success,  to  civic  prom- 
inence and  honor,  is  the  path  of  political 
corruption.  We  might  compare  this  to 
the  path  laid  out  by  Benjamin  Franklin, 
who  also  secured  all  of  these  things,  but 
told  young  men  that  they  could  be  obtained 
only  by  strenuous  effort  and  frugal  living, 
by  the  cultivation  of  the  mind,  and  the 
holding  fast  to  righteousness;  or,  again,  we 
might  compare  it  to  the  ideals  which  were 
held  up  to  the  American  youth  fifty  years 
ago,  lower,  to  be  sure,  than  the  revolution- 
ary ideal,  but  still  fine  and  aspiring  toward 
honorable  dealing  and  careful  living.  They 
were  told  that  the  career  of  the  self-made 
man  was  open  to  every  American  boy,  if 
he  worked  hard  and  saved  his  money,  im- 
proved his  mind,  and  followed  a  steady  ambi- 
tion. The  writer  remembers  that  when  she 
was  ten  years  old,  the  village  schoolmaster 


DEMOCRACY  AND  SOCIAL  ETHICS 

told  his  little  flock,  without  any  mitigating 
clauses,  that  Jay  Gould  had  laid  the  foun- 
dation of  his  colossal  fortune  by  always 
saving  bits  of  string,  and  that,  as  a  result, 
every  child  in  the  village  assiduously  col- 
lected party-colored  balls  of  twine.  A  bright 
Chicago  boy  might  well  draw  the  inference 
that  the  path  of  the  corrupt  politician  not 
only  leads  to  civic  honors,  but  to  the  glo- 
ries of  benevolence  and  philanthropy.  This 
lowering  of  standards,  this  setting  of  an 
ideal,  is  perhaps  the  worst  of  the  situation, 
for,  as  we  said  in  the  first  chapter,  we  de- 
termine ideals  by  our  daily  actions  and 
decisions  not  only  for  ourselves,  but  largely 
for  each  other. 

We  are  all  involved  in  this  political  cor- 
ruption, and  as  members  of  the  community 
stand  indicted.  This  is  the  penalty  of  a 
democracy,  —  that  we  are  bound  to  move 
forward  or  retrograde  together.  None  of 
us  can  stand  aside;  our  feet  are  mired  in 
the  same  soil,  and  our  lungs  breathe  the 
same  air. 

256 


POLITICAL  REFORM 

That  the  alderman  has  much  to  do  with 
setting  the  standard  of  life  and  desirable 
prosperity  may  be  illustrated  by  the  follow- 
ing incident:  During  one  of  the  campaigns 
a  clever  cartoonist  drew  a  poster  represent- 
ing the  successful  alderman  in  portraiture 
drinking  champagne  at  a  table  loaded  with 
pretentious  dishes  and  surrounded  by  other 
revellers.  In  contradistinction  was  his  op- 
ponent, a  bricklayer,  who  sat  upon  a  half- 
finished  wall,  eating  a  meagre  dinner  from 
a  workingman's  dinner-pail,  and  the  passer-by 
was  asked  which  type  of  representative  he 
preferred,  the  presumption  being  that  at 
least  in  a  workingman's  district  the  brick- 
layer would  come  out  ahead.  To  the  cha- 
grin of  the  reformers,  however,  it  was 
gradually  discovered  that,  in  the  popular 
mind,  a  man  who  laid  bricks  and  wore 
overalls  was  not  nearly  so  desirable  for  an 
alderman  as  the  man  who  drank  cham- 
pagne and  wore  a  diamond  in  his  shirt 
front.  The  district  wished  its  representa- 
tive "  to  stand  up  with  the  best  of  them," 
s  257 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL    ETHICS 

and  certainly  some  of  the  constituents 
would  have  been  ashamed  to  have  been 
represented  by  a  bricklayer.  It  is  part  of 
that  general  desire  to  appear  well,  the  opti- 
mistic and  thoroughly  American  belief,  that 
even  if  a  man  is  working  with  his  hands 
to-day,  he  and  his  children  will  quite  likely 
be  in  a  better  position  in  the  swift  coming 
to-rnorrow,  and  there  is  no  need  of  being 
too  closely  associated  with  common  work- 
ing people.  There  is  an  honest  absence 
of  class  consciousness,  and  a  naive  belief 
that  the  kind  of  occupation  quite  largely 
determines  social  position.  This  is  doubt- 
less exaggerated  in  a  neighborhood  of 
foreign  people  by  the  fact  that  as  each 
nationality  becomes  more  adapted  to  Amer- 
ican conditions,  the  scale  of  its  occupation 
rises.  Fifty  years  ago  in  America  "  a 
Dutchman "  was  used  as  a  term  of  re- 
proach, meaning  a  man  whose  language 
was  not  understood,  and  who  performed 
menial  tasks,  digging  sewers  and  building 
railroad  embankments.  Later  the  Irish  did 
258 


POLITICAL  REFORM 

the  same  work  in  the  community,  but  as 
quickly  as  possible  handed  it  on  to  the  Ital- 
ians, to  whom  the  name  "  dago "  is  said 
to  cling  as  a  result  of  the  digging  which 
the  Irishman  resigned  to  him.  The  Ital- 
ian himself  is  at  last  waking  up  to  this 
fact.  In  a  political  speech  recently  made 
by  an  Italian  padrone,  he  bitterly  reproached 
the  alderman  for  giving  the-four-dollars-a- 
day  "jobs"  of  sitting  in  an  ofifice  to  Irish- 
men and  the-dollar-and-a-half-a-day  "jobs"  of 
sweeping  the  streets  to  the  Italians.  This 
general  struggle  to  rise  in  life,  to  be  at 
least  politically  represented  by  one  of  the 
best,  as  to  occupation  and  social  status,  has 
also  its  negative  side.  We  must  remember 
that  the  imitative  impulse  plays  an  impor- 
tant part  in  life,  and  that  the  loss  of  social 
estimation,  keenly  felt  by  all  of  us,  is  perhaps 
most  dreaded  by  the  humblest,  among  whom 
freedom  of  individual  conduct,  the  power 
to  give  only  just  weight  to  the  opinion 
of  neighbors,  is  but  feebly  developed.  A 
form    of    constraint,    gentle,    but    powerful, 

259 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

is  afforded  by  the  simple  desire  to  do 
what  others  do,  in  order  to  share  with 
them  the  approval  of  the  community.  Of 
course,  the  larger  the  number  of  people 
among  whom  an  habitual  mode  of  conduct 
obtains,  the  greater  the  constraint  it  puts 
upon  the  individual  will.  Thus  it  is  that 
the  political  corruption  of  the  city  presses 
most  heavily  where  it  can  be  least  resisted, 
and  is  most  likely  to  be  imitated. 

According  to  the  same  law,  the  positive 
evils  of  corrupt  government  are  bound  to 
fall  heaviest  upon  the  poorest  and  least 
capable.  When  the  water  of  Chicago  is 
foul,  the  prosperous  buy  water  bottled  at 
distant  springs;  the  poor  have  no  alter- 
native but  the  typhoid  fever  which  comes 
from  using  the  city's  supply.  When  the 
garbage  contracts  are  not  enforced,  the 
well-to-do  pay  for  private  service ;  the  poor 
suffer  the  discomfort  and  illness  which  are 
inevitable  from  a  foul  atmosphere.  The 
prosperous  business  man  has  a  certain 
choice  as  to  whether  he  will  treat  with 
260 


POLITICAL  REFORM 

the  "boss"  politician  or  preserve  his  inde- 
pendence on  a  smaller  income;  but  to  an 
Italian  day  laborer  it  is  a  choice  between 
obeying  the  commands  of  a  political  "boss" 
or  practical  starvation.  Again,  a  more  in- 
telligent man  may  philosophize  a  little 
upon  the  present  state  of  corruption,  and 
reflect  that  it  is  but  a  phase  of  our  com- 
mercialism, from  which  we  are  bound  to 
emerge;  at  any  rate,  he  may  give  himself 
the  solace  of  literature  and  ideals  in  other 
directions,  but  the  more  ignorant  man  who 
lives  only  in  the  narrow  present  has  no 
such  resource ;  slowly  the  conviction  enters 
his  mind  that  politics  is  a  matter  of  favors 
and  positions,  that  self-government  means 
pleasing  the  "boss"  and  standing  in  with  the 
"gang."  This  slowly  acquired  knowledge  he 
hands  on  to  his  family.  During  the  month 
of  February  his  boy  may  come  home  from 
school  with  rather  incoherent  tales  about 
Washington  and  Lincoln,  and  the  father 
may  for  the  moment  be  fired  to  tell  of 
Garibaldi,  but  such  talk  is  only  periodic, 
261 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

and  the  long  year  round  the  fortunes  of 
the  entire  family,  down  to  the  opportunity 
to  earn  food  and  shelter,  depend  upon  the 
"  boss." 

In  a  certain  measure  also,  the  opportunities 
for  pleasure  and  recreation  depend  upon 
him.  To  use  a  former  illustration,  if  a  man 
happens  to  have  a  taste  for  gambling,  if  the 
slot  machine  affords  him  diversion,  he  goes 
to  those  houses  which  are  protected  by  polit- 
ical influence.  If  he  and  his  friends  like  to 
drop  into  a  saloon  after  midnight,  or  even 
want  to  hear  a  little  music  while  they  drink 
together  early  in  the  evening,  he  is  break- 
ing the  law  when  he  indulges  in  either  of 
them,  and  can  only  be  exempt  from  arrest 
or  fine  because  the  great  political  machine 
is  friendly  to  him  and  expects  his  allegiance 
in  return. 

During  the  campaign,  when  it  was  found 
hard  to  secure  enough  local  speakers  of 
the  moral  tone  which  was  desired,  orators 
were  imported  from  other  parts  of  the 
town,  from  the  so-called  "better  element." 
262 


POLITICAL  REFORM 

Suddenly  it  was  rumored  on  all  sides  that, 
while  the  money  and  speakers  for  the  reform 
candidate  were  coming  from  the  swells,  the 
money  which  was  backing  the  corrupt  alder- 
man also  came  from  a  swell  source;  that 
the  president  of  a  street-car  combination,  for 
whom  he  performed  constant  oflBces  in  the 
city  council,  was  ready  to  back  him  to  the 
extent  of  fifty  thousand  dollars ;  that  this 
president,  too,  was  a  good  man,  and  sat  in 
high  places ;  that  he  had  recently  given  a 
large  sum  of  money  to  an  educational  insti- 
tution and  was  therefore  as  philanthropic, 
not  to  say  good  and  upright,  as  any  man 
in  town;  that  the  corrupt  alderman  had  the 
sanction  of  the  highest  authorities,  and  that 
the  lecturers  who  were  talking  against  cor- 
ruption, and  the  selling  and  buying  of 
franchises,  were  only  the  cranks,  and  not 
the  solid  business  men  who  had  developed 
and  built  up  Chicago. 

All    parts    of   the   community  are    bound 
together  in  ethical  development.     If  the  so- 
called    more    enlightened    members   accept 
263 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

corporate  gifts  from  the  man  who  buys  up 
the  council,  and  the  so-called  less  enlight- 
ened members  accept  individual  gifts  from 
the  man  who  sells  out  the  council,  we  surely 
must  take  our  punishment  together.  There 
is  the  difference,  of  course,  that  in  the  first 
case  we  act  collectively,  and  in  the  second 
case  individually;  but  is  the  punishment 
which  follows  the  first  any  lighter  or  less  far- 
reaching  in  its  consequences  than  the  more 
obvious  one  which  follows  the  second? 

Have  our  morals  been  so  captured  by 
commercialism,  to  use  Mr.  Chapman's  gener- 
alization, that  we  do  not  see  a  moral  derelic- 
tion when  business  or  educational  interests 
are  served  thereby,  although  we  are  still 
shocked  when  the  saloon  interest  is  thus 
served  ? 

The  street -car  company  which  declares  that 
it  is  impossible  to  do  business  without  man- 
aging the  city  council,  is  on  exactly  the 
same  moral  level  with  the  man  who  cannot 
retain  political  power  unless  he  has  a  saloon, 
a  large  acquaintance  with  the  semi-criminal 

264 


POLITICAL   REFORM 

class,  and  questionable  money  with  which  to 
debauch  his  constituents.  Both  sets  of  men 
assume  that  the  only  appeal  possible  is 
along  the  line  of  self-interest.  They  frankly 
acknowledge  money  getting  as  their  own 
motive  power,  and  they  believe  in  the  cupid- 
ity of  all  the  men  whom  they  encounter. 
No  attempt  in  either  case  is  made  to  put 
forward  the  claims  of  the  public,  or  to  find 
a  moral  basis  for  action.  As  the  corrupt 
politician  assumes  that  public  morality  is 
impossible,  so  many  business  men  become 
convinced  that  to  pay  tribute  to  the  corrupt 
aldermen  is  on  the  whole  cheaper  than  to 
have  taxes  too  high ;  that  it  is  better  to  pay 
exorbitant  rates  for  franchises,  than  to  be 
made  unwilling  partners  in  transportation 
experiments.  Such  men  come  to  regard 
political  reformers  as  a  sort  of  monomaniac, 
who  are  not  reasonable  enough  to  see  the 
necessity  of  the  present  arrangement  which 
has  slowly  been  evolved  and  developed,  and 
upon  which  business  is  safely  conducted. 
A  reformer  who  really  knew  the  people 
265 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

and  their  great  human  needs,  who  believed 
that  it  was  the  business  of  government  to 
serve  them,  and  who  further  recognized  the 
educative  power  of  a  sense  of  responsibil- 
ity, would  possess  a  clew  by  which  he  might 
analyze  the  situation.  He  would  find  out 
what  needs,  which  the  alderman  supplies, 
are  legitimate  ones  which  the  city  itself 
could  undertake,  in  counter-distinction  to 
those  which  pander  to  the  lower  instincts  of 
the  constituency.  A  mother  who  eats  her 
Christmas  turkey  in  a  reverent  spirit  of 
thankfulness  to  the  alderman  who  gave  it  to 
her,  might  be  gradually  brought  to  a  genuine 
sense  of  appreciation  and  gratitude  to  the 
city  which  supplies  her  little  children  with 
a  Kindergarten,  or,  to  the  Board  of  Health 
which  properly  placarded  a  case  of  scarlet- 
fever  next  door  and  spared  her  sleepless 
nights  and  wearing  anxiety,  as  well  as  the 
money  paid  with  such  difficulty  to  the  doc- 
tor and  the  druggist.  The  man  who  in  his 
emotional  gratitude  almost  kneels  before  his 
political  friend  who  gets  his  boy  out  of  jail, 
266 


POLITICAL  REFORM 

might  be  made  to  see  the  kindness  and  good 
sense  of  the  city  authorities  who  provided 
the  boy  with  a  playground  and  reading 
room,  where  he  might  spend  his  hours  of 
idleness  and  restlessness,  and  through  which 
his  temptations  to  petty  crime  might  be 
averted.  A  man  who  is  grateful  to  the 
alderman  who  sees  that  his  gambling  and 
racing  are  not  interfered  with,  might  learn 
to  feel  loyal  and  responsible  to  the  city 
which  supplied  him  with  a  gymnasium  and 
swimming  tank  where  manly  and  well-con- 
ducted sports  are  possible.  The  voter  who 
is  eager  to  serve  the  alderman  at  all  times, 
because  the  tenure  of  his  job  is  dependent 
upon  aldermanic  favor,  might  find  great 
relief  and  pleasure  in  working  for  the  city 
in  which  his  place  was  secured  by  a  well- 
administered  civil  service  law. 

After  all,  what  the  corrupt  alderman 
demands  from  his  followers  and  largely 
depends  upon  is  a  sense  of  loyalty,  a 
standing-by  the  man  who  is  good  to  you, 
who  understands  you,  and  who  gets  you 
267 


DEMOCRACY   AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

out  of  trouble.  All  the  social  life  of  the 
voter  from  the  time  he  was  a  little  boy 
and  played  "  craps "  with  his  "  own  push," 
and  not  with  some  other  "push,"  has  been 
founded  on  this  sense  of  loyalty  and  of 
standing  in  with  his  friends.  Now  that 
he  is  a  man,  he  likes  the  sense  of  being 
inside  a  political  organization,  of  being 
trusted  with  political  gossip,  of  belonging 
to  a  set  of  fellows  who  understand  things, 
and  whose  interests  are  being  cared  for 
by  a  strong  friend  in  the  city  council  itself. 
All  this  is  perfectly  legitimate,  and  all  in 
the  line  of  the  development  of  a  strong 
civic  loyalty,  if  it  were  merely  socialized 
and  enlarged.  Such  a  voter  has  already 
proceeded  in  the  forward  direction  in  so 
far  as  he  has  lost  the  sense  of  isolation, 
and  has  abandoned  the  conviction  that 
city  government  does  not  touch  his  indi- 
vidual affairs.  Even  Mill  claims  that  the 
social  feelings  of  man,  his  desire  to  be  at 
unity  with  his  fellow-creatures,  are  the 
natural  basis  for  morality,  and  he  defines 
268 


POLITICAL  REFORM 

a  man  of  high  moral  culture  as  one  who 
thinks  of  himself,  not  as  an  isolated  indi- 
vidual, but  as  a  part  in  a  social  organism. 

Upon  this  foundation  it  ought  not  to  be 
difficult  to  build  a  structure  of  civic  virtue. 
It  is  only  necessary  to  make  it  clear  to  the 
voter  that  his  individual  needs  are  com- 
mon needs,  that  is,  public  needs,  and  that 
they  can  only  be  legitimately  supplied  for 
him  when  they  are  supplied  for  all.  If  we 
believe  that  the  individual  struggle  for  life 
may  widen  into  a  struggle  for  the  lives  of 
all,  surely  the  demand  of  an  individual  for 
decency  and  comfort,  for  a  chance  to  work 
and  obtain  the  fulness  of  life  may  be  wid- 
ened until  it  gradually  embraces  all  the 
members  of  the  community,  and  rises  into 
a  sense  of  the  common  weal. 

In  order,  however,  to  give  him  a  sense 
of  conviction  that  his  individual  needs 
must  be  merged  into  the  needs  of  the 
many,  and  are  only  important  as  they  are 
thus  merged,  the  appeal  cannot  be  made 
along    the    line    of    self-interest.      The    de- 

269 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS 

mand  should  be  universalized;  in  this  pro- 
cess it  would  also  become  clarified,  and  the 
basis  of  our  political  organization  become 
perforce  social  and  ethical. 

Would  it  be  dangerous  to  conclude  that 
the  corrupt  politician  himself,  because  he 
is  democratic  in  method,  is  on  a  more 
ethical  line  of  social  development  than  the 
reformer,  who  believes  that  the  people  must 
be  made  over  by  "  good  citizens  "  and  gov- 
erned by  "  experts  "  ?  The  former  at  least 
are  engaged  in  that  great  moral  effort  of 
getting  the  mass  to  express  itself,  and  of 
adding  this  mass  energy  and  wisdom  to 
the  community  as  a  whole. 

The  wide  divergence  of  experience  makes 
it  difficult  for  the  good  citizen  to  under- 
stand this  point  of  view,  and  many  things 
conspire  to  make  it  hard  for  him  to  act  upon 
it.  He  is  more  or  less  a  victim  to  that  curi- 
ous feeling  so  often  possessed  by  the  good 
man,  that  the  righteous  do  not  need  to  be 
agreeable,  that  their  goodness  alone  is  suffi- 
cient, and  that  they  can  leave  the  arts  and 
270 


POLITICAL  REFORM 

wiles  of  securing  popular  favor  to  the  self- 
seeking.  This  results  in  a  certain  repellent 
manner,  commonly  regarded  as  the  apparel 
of  righteousness,  and  is  further  responsible 
for  the  fatal  mistake  of  making  the  sur- 
roundings of  "good  influences"  singularly 
unattractive ;  a  mistake  which  really  de- 
serves a  reprimand  quite  as  severe  as  the 
equally  reprehensible  deed  of  making  the 
surroundings  of  "evil  influences"  so  be- 
guiling. Both  are  akin  to  that  state  of 
mind  which  narrows  the  entrance  into  a 
wider  morality  to  the  eye  of  a  needle,  and 
accounts  for  the  fact  that  new  moral  move- 
ments have  ever  and  again  been  inaugu- 
rated by  those  who  have  found  themselves 
in  revolt  against  the  conventionalized  good. 
The  success  of  the  reforming  politician 
who  insists  upon  mere  purity  of  admin- 
istration and  upon  the  control  and  sup- 
pression of  the  unruly  elements  in  the 
community,,  may  be  the  easy  result  of  a 
narrowing  and  selfish  process.  For  the 
painful  condition  of  endeavoring  to  minister 

271 


DEMOCRACY   AND    SOCIAL   ETHICS 

to  genuine  social  needs,  through  the  poHti- 
cal  machinery,  and  at  the  same  time  to 
remodel  that  machinery  so  that  it  shall 
be  adequate  to  its  new  task,  is  to  encounter 
the  inevitable  discomfort  of  a  transition  into 
a  new  type  of  democratic  relation.  The 
perplexing  experiences  of  the  actual  admin- 
istration, however,  have  a  genuine  value  of 
their  own.  The  economist  who  treats  the 
individual  cases  as  mere  data,  and  the  social 
reformer  who  labors  to  make  such  cases 
impossible,  solely  because  of  the  appeal  to 
his  reason,  may  have  to  share  these 
perplexities  before  they  feel  themselves 
within  the  grasp  of  a  principle  of  growth, 
working  outward  from  within ;  before  they 
can  gain  the  exhilaration  and  uplift  which 
comes  when  the  individual  sympathy  and 
intelligence  is  caught  into  the  forward 
intuitive  movement  of  the  mass.  This 
general  movement  is  not  without  its  in- 
tellectual aspects,  but  it  has  to  be  trans- 
ferred from  the  region  of  perception  to 
that  of  emotion  before  it  is  really  appre^ 
272 


POLITICAL  REFORM 

bended.  The  mass  of  men  seldom  move 
together  without  an  emotional  incentive. 
The  man  who  chooses  to  stand  aside,  avoids 
much  of  the  perplexity,  but  at  the  same 
time  he  loses  contact  with  a  great  source 
of  vitality. 

Perhaps  the  last  and  greatest  difficulty  in 
the  paths  of  those  who  are  attempting  to 
define  and  attain  a  social  morality,  is  that 
which  arises  from  the  fact  that  they  cannot 
adequately  test  the  value  of  their  efforts, 
cannot  indeed  be  sure  of  their  motives  until 
their  efforts  are  reduced  to  action  and  are 
presented  in  some  workable  form  of  social 
conduct  or  control.  For  action  is  indeed 
the  sole  medium  of  expression  for  ethics. 
We  continually  forget  that  the  sphere  of 
morals  is  the  sphere  of  action,  that  specula- 
tion in  regard  to  morality  is  but  observation 
and  must  remain  in  the  sphere  of  intellect- 
ual comment,  that  a  situation  does  not  really 
become  moral  until  we  are  confronted  with 
the  question  of  what  shall  be  done  in  a 
concrete  case,  and  are   obliged  to  act  upon 

T  273 


DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

our  theory.  A  stirring  appeal  has  lately 
been  made  by  a  recognized  ethical  lecturer 
who  has  declared  that  "  It  is  insanity  to 
expect  to  receive  the  data  of  wisdom  by 
looking  on.  We  arrive  at  moral  knowledge 
only  by  tentative  and  observant  practice. 
We  learn  how  to  apply  the  new  insight 
by  having  attempted  to  apply  the  old  and 
having  found  it  to  fail." 

This  necessity  of  reducing  the  experiment 
to  action  throws  out  of  the  undertaking  all 
timid  and  irresolute  persons,  more  than  that, 
all  those  who  shrink  before  the  need  of  striv- 
ing forward  shoulder  to  shoulder  with  the 
cruder  men,  whose  sole  virtue  may  be  social 
effort,  and  even  that  not  untainted  by  self- 
seeking,  who  are  indeed  pushing  forward  so- 
cial morality,  but  who  are  doing  it  irrationally 
and  emotionally,  and  often  at  the  expense  of 
the  well-settled  standards  of  morality. 

The   power   to   distinguish    between    the 

genuine  effort  and  the  adventitious  mistakes 

is   perhaps    the    most    difficult    test   which 

comes  to   our   fallible   intelligence.     In    the 

274 


POLITICAL  REFORM 

range  of  individual  morals,  we  have  learned 
to  distrust  him  who  would  reach  spirituality 
by  simply  renouncing  the  world,  or  by 
merely  speculating  upon  its  evils.  The 
result,  as  well  as  the  process  of  virtues 
attained  by  repression,  has  become  distaste- 
ful to  us.  When  the  entire  moral  energy 
of  an  individual  goes  into  the  cultivation 
of  personal  integrity,  we  all  know  how 
unlovely  the  result  may  become ;  the  char- 
acter is  upright,  of  course,  but  too  coated 
over  with  the  result  of  its  own  endeavor  to 
be  attractive.  In  this  effort  toward  a  higher 
morality  in  our  social  relations,  we  must 
demand  that  the  individual  shall  be  willing 
to  lose  the  sense  of  personal  achievement, 
and  shall  be  content  to  realize  his  activity 
only  in  connection  with  the  activity  of  the 
many. 

The  cry  of  "  Back  to  the  people  "  is  al- 
ways heard  at  the  same  time,  when  we  have 
the  prophet's  demand  for  repentance  or 
the  religious  cry  of  "  Back  to  Christ,"  as 
though  we  would  seek  refuge  with  our  fel- 
275 


DEMOCRACY   AND   SOCIAL   ETHICS 

lows  and  believe  in  our  common  experiences 
as  a  preparation  for  a  new  moral  struggle. 

As  the  acceptance  of  democracy  brings  a 
certain  life-giving  power,  so  it  has  its  own 
sanctions  and  comforts.  Perhaps  the  most 
obvious  one  is  the  curious  sense  which 
comes  to  us  from  time  to  time,  that  we 
belong  to  the  whole,  that  a  certain  basic 
well  being  can  never  be  taken  away  from 
us  whatever  the  turn  of  fortune.  Tolstoy 
has  portrayed  the  experience  in  "  Master 
and  Man."  The  former  saves  his  servant 
from  freezing,  by  protecting  him  with  the 
heat  of  his  body,  and  his  dying  hours  are 
filled  with  an  ineffable  sense  of  healing  and 
well-being.  Such  experiences,  of  which  we 
have  all  had  glimpses,  anticipate  in  our 
relation  to  the  living  that  peace  of  mind 
which  envelopes  us  when  we  meditate  upon 
the  great  multitude  of  the  dead.  It  is  akin 
to  the  assurance  that  the  dead  understand, 
because  they  have  entered  into  the  Great 
Experience,  and  therefore  must  comprehend 
all  lesser  ones ;  that  all  the  misunderstand- 
276 


POLITICAL   REFORM 

ings  we  have  in  life  are  due  to  partial 
experience,  and  all  life's  fretting  comes  of 
our  limited  intelligence ;  when  the  last  and 
Great  Experience  comes,  it  is,  perforce, 
attended  by  mercy  and  forgiveness.  Con- 
sciously to  accept  Democracy  and  its 
manifold  experiences  is  to  anticipate  that 
peace  and  freedom. 


277 


INDEX 


Alderman,  basis  of  his  political  suc- 
cess, 226,  228,  240,  243,  248,  267 ; 
his  influence  on  morals  of  the 
American  boy,  251,  255,  256;  on 
standard  of  life,  257 ;  his  power, 
232,  233,  235,  246,  260 ;  his  social 
duties,  234,  236,  243,  250. 

Art  and  the  workingman,  219,  225. 

"  Boss,"   the,    ignorant    man's   de- 
pendence on,  260,  266. 
Business  college,  the,  197. 

Charity,  administration  of,  14,  22; 

neighborly  relations  in,  29,  230; 

organized,  25;  standards  in,  15, 

27,  32,  38,  49,  58 ;    scientific  vs. 

human  relations  in,  64. 
Child  labor,  premature  work,  41, 

188;  first  laws  concerning,  167, 

170. 
City,  responsibilities  of,  266. 
Civil  service  law,  its  enforcement, 

231.  233- 
Commercial    and    industrial    life, 

social  position  of,  compared,  193. 
Commercialism     and     education, 

190-199,  216;    morals    captured 

by,    264;     polytechnic     schools 

taken  by,  202. 
Cooperation,  153,  158, 
Cooper,  Peter,  202. 

Dayton,  Ohio,  factory  at,  216. 
Death  and  burials  among  simple 
people,  238. 


Domestic  service,  problem  of,  in 
France,  England,  and  America, 
135;  industrial  difficulty  of, 
106 ;  moral  issues  of,  106. 

Education,  attempts  at  industrial, 
201;  commercialism  in,  196, 
201 ;  in  commercialism,  216 ;  in 
technical  schools,  201 ;  lack  of 
adaptation  in,  199,  208,  212;  of 
industrial  workers,  180,  193,  199, 
219 ;  offset  to  overspecialization, 
211 ;  public  school  and,  190, 192 ; 
relation  of,  to  the  child,  180,  185, 
193 ;  relation  of,  to  the  immigrant, 
181-186 ;  university  extension 
lectures  and  settlements,  199; 
workingmen's  lecture  courses, 
214. 

Educators,  mistakes  of,  212;  new 
demands  on,  178,  192,  201,  211. 

Family  claim,  the,  4, 74,  78 ;  daugh- 
ter's college  education,  82;  em- 
ployer's vs.  domestic's,  123,  124; 
on  the  daughter,  82;  on  the  son, 
ibid. 

Family  life,  misconception  of,  116. 

Filial  relations,  clash  of  moral 
codes,  94. 

Funerals,  attitude  of  simple  people 
toward,  238. 

Household  employee,  the,  108, 109; 
character  of,  112;    domestic  vs. 


1  This  index  is  not  intended  to  be  exhaustive. 
279 


INDEX 


factory,  ii6,  ii8,  119, 122;  isola- 
tion of,  109,  III,  117,  120,  132; 
morals  of,  125;  unnatural  rela- 
tion of,  113,  120,  121,  126,  127; 
unreasonable  demands  on,  113, 
115;  residence  clubs  for,  133;  so- 
cial position  of,  114,  119,  122. 

Household  employer,  the,  undemo- 
cratic ethics  of,  116;  reform  of, 
in  relation  to  employee,  126. 

Household,  the,  advantages  and 
disadvantages  of  factory  work 
over,  129;  competition  of  factory 
work  with,  128 ;  difficulties  of  the 
small,  135 ;  industrial  isolation 
of,  117;  industry  of,  transferred 
to  factory,  104,  105  ;  lack  of  prog- 
ress in,  117;  origin  of,  104;  so- 
cial vs.  individual  aspects  of, 
103;  suburban  difficulties  of, 
134;  wages  in,  131. 

Hull-house  experiences,  43,  53,  58, 
59,  240,  247. 

Human  life,  value  of,  7,  178. 

Individual  action  vs.  associated, 
137,  153,  158 ;  advantages  of,  158, 
162;  limitations  of,  165;  moral 
evolution  involved  in,  226. 

Individual  vs.  social  needs,  155, 269. 

Individual  vs.  social  virtues,  224, 
227,  265. 

Italian  immigrant,  the,  conception 
of  abstract  virtue  among,  229; 
dependence  of,  on  their  children, 
184 ;  education  of,  185 ;  new  con- 
ditions of  life  of,  181. 

Juvenile  criminal,  the,  evolution  of, 
53-56,  187. 

Labor,   division   of,  210,  213;    re- 
action from,  215. 
Law  and  order,  172,  174,  234. 

Moral  fact  and  moral  idea,  227, 
229,  273. 

2 


Morality,  natural  basis  of,  268 ; 
personal  and  social,  6,  176,  103. 

Philanthropic  standpoint,  the,  its 
dangers,  150,  155-157. 

Philanthropist,  the,  154,  175-176. 

Political  corruption,  ethical  devel- 
opment in,  270;  formation  of 
reform  clubs,  246 ;  greatest  press- 
ure of,  260;  individual  and  so- 
cial aspect  of,  264;  leniency  in 
regard  to,  239 ;  responsibility  for, 
256,  263;  selling  of  votes,  244- 
246;  street  railway  and  saloon 
interest,  262. 

Political  leaders,  causes  of  success 
of,  224. 

Political  standards,  228,  229,  251- 
253,  261 ;  compared  with  Ben- 
jamin Franklin's,  255. 

Referendum  method,  the,  164. 

Reformer,  the,  ethics  of,  270. 

Reform  movements  in  politics, 
causes  of  failure  in,  222,  240, 
262,  272,  274;  business  men's 
attitude  toward,  265. 

Rumford,  Count,  117. 

Ruskin,  219. 

Saloon,  the,  243,  264. 

Social  claim,  the,  4, 77 ;  child  study 

and,  92,  180;    misplaced  energy 

and,  90. 
Social   virtues,  code  of  employer, 

143,  148 ;  code  of  laboring  man, 

ibid. 

Technical  schools,  201 ;  adaptation 
of,  to  workingmen,  204 ;  compro- 
mises in,  203;  polytechnic  insti- 
tutions, 202  ;  textile  schools,  203 ; 
women  in,  ibid. 

Thrift,  individualism  of,  31,  40,  212. 

Trades  unions,  148,  158,  167,  169, 
171 ;  sympathetic  strikes,  174. 

80 


INDEX 


Workingman,  the,  ambition  of,  for 
his  children,  191,  258 ;  art  in  re- 
lation to,  218;  charity  of,  154; 
evening  classes  and  social  enter- 
tainment for,  189;  grievance  of, 


211 ;  historical  perspective  in  the 
work  of,  ibid. ;  organizations  of, 
214;  standards  for  political  can- 
didate, 257. 


381 


The  Citizen's  Library  of  Economics, 
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Monopolies  and  Trusts.    By  Richard  T.  Ely,  Ph.D.,  LL.D. 

"  It  is  admirable.     It  is  the  soundest  contribution  on  the  subject  that  has 
appeared."  —  Professor  John  R.  Commons. 

"  By  all  odds  the  best  written  of  Professor  Ely's  work." 

—  Professor  Simon  N.  Pattkn,  University  of  Pennsylvania. 

Outlines  of  Economics.  By  Richard  T.  Ely,  Ph.D.,  LL.D., 
author  of  "  Monopolies  and  Trusts,"  etc. 

The  Economics  of  Distribution.  By  John  A.  Hobson, 
author  of  "The  Evolution  of  Modern  Capitalism,"  etc. 

World  Politics.  By  Paul  S.  Reinsch,  Ph.D.,  LL.B.,  Assistant 
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Economic  Crises.  By  Edward  D.  Jones,  Ph.D.,  Instructor  in 
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Political  Parties  in  the  United  States,  1846-1861.     By 

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Essays  on  the  Monetary  History  of  the  United  States. 

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In  Preparation  for  Early  Issue 


DEMOCRACY   AND  SOCIAL  ETHICS 

By  Jane  Addams,  Head  of  "Hull  House,"  Chicago;  joint 
author  of  "Philanthropy  and  Social  Progress."     {Nout ready.) 

Miss  Addams'  Settlement  Work  is  known  to  all  who  are  interested  in  social 
amelioration  and  municipal  conditions.  As  the  title  of  her  book  shows,  it  will 
be  occupied  with  the  reciprocal  relations  of  ethical  progress  and  the  growth  of 
democratic  thought,  sentiment,  and  institutions. 

CUSTOM  AND  COMPETITION 

By  Richard  T.  Ely,  LL.D.,  Professor  of  Political  Economy 
and  Director  of  the  School  of  Economics  and  Political  Science 
in  the  University  of  Wisconsin;  President  of  the  American 
Economic  Association;  author  of  "  Monopolies  and  Trusts,"  etc. 

Topics  treated  under  Custom  include  the  Rent  of  Land  and  Custom ;  Inter- 
est and  Custom ;  The  Remuneration  of  Personal  Services  and  Custom ;  Custom 
and  Commerce. 

Competition  is  first  discussed  with  reference  to  the  biological  aspects  of  the 
question,  and  the  significance  of  subhuman  competition  is  confined  and  a  careful 
classification  of  its  various  kinds  is  presented.  One  of  the  main  topics  of  the 
book  is  Competition  as  a  Principle  of  Distribution,  and  its  treatment  of  the  sub- 
ject of  price  admirably  supplements  the  theoretical  discussion  in  "  Monopolies 
and  Trusts." 

AMERICAN  MUNICIPAL  PROGRESS 

By  Charles  Zueblin,  B.D.,  Associate  Professor  of  Sociology 
in  the  University  of  Chicago. 

This  work  takes  up  the  problem  of  the  so-called  public  utilities,  public 
schools,  libraries,  children's  playgrounds,  public  baths,  public  gymnasiums,  etc. 
The  discussion  is  from  the  standpoint  of  public  welfare  and  is  based  on  repeated 
personal  investigations  in  leading  cities  of  Europe,  especially  England  and  the 
United  States. 

COLONIAL  GOVERNMENT 

By  Paul  S.  Reinsch,  Ph.D.,  LL.B.,  Professor  of  Political  Sci- 
ence in  the  University  of  Wisconsin ;  Author  of  "  World 
Politics  at  the  End  of  the  Nineteenth  Century  as  Influenced 
by  the  Oriental  Situation." 

By  the  author  of  the  "  World  Politics,"  which  met  so  cordial  a  reception 
from  students  of  modem  political  history.  The  main  divisions  of  the  book  are: 
Motives  and  Methods  of  Colonization;  Forms  of  Colonial  Government;  Rela- 
tions between  the  Mother  Country  and  the  Colonies;  Internal  Government  of 
the  Colonies ;  The  Special  Colonial  Problems  of  the  United  States. 


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